No Stress
An app concept created in the Sektor 3.0 programme.
So much Design Thinking.
About the programme
I got to be a part of the Sektor 3.0 Fund
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It’s a program that supports NGOs and charities that have ideas for solutions addressing societal needs and problems – in accordance with the idea of "tech for good".
It offers a comprehensive cycle of training, mentoring and consulting to help refine the idea and create a coherent concept.
Organisations submit their applications and gain access to the incubation process -
a program, during which they meet every week for workshops with ICT specialists and work on their projects. The workshops curriculum is similar to the Design Thinking stages; they empathize and make experiments, they define (and re-define) the problem, ideate solutions, make prototypes and then pitch the results of their work during the Final to the comittee for a chance of winning financing for their projects. More info about Sektor 3.0 and the amazing things they’re doing can be found on this website.
The process TL;DR version
Project description
Project timeline
We spent a lot of time empathizing and defining the problem. Everybody experiences stress, for countless reasons. However, data from research suggested that people struggle with relieving stress usually due to three factors: they know too little about stress, they don’t recognize their own symptoms and they don’t know many methods of dealing with stress when it happens.
We’ve gone to further define, research the problem and ideate solutions, using a lot of tools: an Empathy map, Personas, Value Proposition Canvas, Risk matrix, Customer Journey Map, Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas…
Eventually we decided to make an app that does three things:
1. Teaches about stress
2. Shows how to recognize stress and its symptoms
3. Helps relieve stress with simple exercises
I made low-fidelity and high-fidelity mockups, created a landing page and a presentation pitch. Unfortunately we did not win the funding, but the Institute left with a concept that we’ve put a lot of work into, research results, mockups, a landing page and a presentation pitch. It was also super fun to be a part of the program.
1. Defining the problem
Brainstorming & coming up with too many issues
2. Empathizing
Empathy map, personas and research
3. Re-defining the problem
”We can’t solve all of the issues” phase
4. Questions along the way
Value Proposition Canvas
5. Research
A survey to test our hypotheses
6. Ideating solutions
Value Proposition Canvas, Customer Journey Map, Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas...
A lot of ideas.
7. Let’s draw an app
Low-fidelity mockups, high-fidelity mockups, a pitch presentation and a landing page of the project
8. Now what?
Time to rob some banks and pay the developers!
The journey to
NoStress
Empathizing & definining the problem
We started with brainstorming the problem, by answering questions, such as:
1. What problem do we want to solve?
2. When does the problem occur?
3. How big is the problem?
4. Who are the recipients of our solution?
5. How are they dealing with the problem at the moment?
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Turns out, believe it or not... Stress is a complex topic to cover 😅
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After coming up with lots and lots of issues – from school anxiety, through work-related stress, feeling disconnected from our bodies, all the way to the loneliness among the elderly – we came to the conclusion that we have to prioritize. Unfortunately, addressing every possible source of stress in every social group is a backbreaking task.
Not exactly achieving any major ‘defining’, we started working on an Empathy map and Personas. We were basing our work on the reserach that the Institute had already done before. Aga and Sebastian have done hundreds of trainings and workshops, helping people relieve stress, so they had lots of insights and feedback from their clients – from surveys, messages etc. They also read a lot of scientific research about dealing with stress.
Focusing more on the people and less on the problem helped us realize one thing – that while people are indeed feeling stressed for thousands of reasons and in thousands of ways, in the end, their problems were quite... similar.
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Every one of us – from a pressured kid at school, to a lonely senior – is experiencing stress, but a lot of people struggle with relieving it. The stress itself might be induced by a lot of things (which we can’t possibly prevent), but the struggling with relieving stress is usually caused by three factors:
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1. People know too little about stress itself
2. People don’t recognize their own stress symptoms
3. People don’t know many methods of dealing with stress when it happens
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Considering all of that, we decided to do something not exactly by the book. 👀 We didn’t shrink our target group and we didn’t really define our problem in a very precise manner. We decided not to help a specific social group with their specific problems, but rather try and help everyone. Because every one of us is struggling with stress for similar reasons. We wanted to create a solution that would help eliminate those reasons.
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So our final, redefined problem, was:
People
More than 80% 
of Poles
struggle with
don't have the knowledge
don't know their symptoms
don't know the techniques
stress
anxiety, irritation, tension, fears, overwhelming, fear, insecurity, takeover, aggression...
Questions along the way
We made a Value Proposition Canvas, where we came up with jobs, pains and gains that stressed people might have and we produced gain creators and pain relievers to amend them.
We turned conclusions from the VPC to hypotheses for further research. We then prioritized them on a Risk matrix. Some of our hypotheses were already confirmed by the Institute’s previous research (for example the three reasons for struggling with stress listed above), but we wanted to know if people actually want to do something about those reasons:
1. Do they want to increase their knowledge about stress?
2. Do they want to know that they’re feeling stressed at all?
3. Do they want to learn new methods of dealing with stress?
4. Do they believe in the effectiveness of those methods?
Research time!
We’ve made a survey to test our hypotheses.
We asked the respondents if they consider themselves to be stressed from time to time. We thought that almost everybody would think they’re stressed every now and again, but 15% said they aren’t.
We then presented the popular symptoms of stress and asked the 15% if they still think that they don’t experience stress at all. 63% of them changed their minds and admitted that they do feel stressed from time to time. That would indicate that people indeed don’t recognise that they’re feeling stressed at all, even while it’s happening, because they don’t know the symptoms.
We also asked the respondents if they have their own ways of dealing with stress. 80% of people did, 20% didn’t. Of those 80% however, 90% of people wanted to learn new methods, apart from the ones they knew already! Also – everybody that did not have their own ways, wanted to learn some.
That was a good insight for us.
We presented the respondents with a list of ways to relieve stress and asked them what they think about the effectiveness of the methods.
We also asked them how would they like to learn more about stress itself – about its causes and symptoms, techniques to manage it etc. The most popular mediums were YouTube videos, a dedicated app and a website.
Ideating solutions
We have used quite a bit of tools to ideate solutions and work on them: among others – Value Proposition Canvas and a Customer Journey Map. We were also thinking about the business side of the project – we made a Business Model Canvas and a Lean Canvas to help us with that.
I won’t go through all of that, because I don’t find it necessary, I’ll just cut to the point.
We decided to make an app that does three things:
1. Teaches about stress
2. Shows how to recognize stress and its symptoms
3. Helps relieve stress with simple exercises
Aga and Sebastian from the Institute prepared a long list of exercises that could be put in the app and categorized them, I have done a comprehensive benchmark to see if there are other apps that already do those things. Turns out there are quite a few, but they’re usually not stress-oriented, more self-care, therapy based, none of them are in polish and almost none of them are free.
We wanted our app to be private, free, in polish and, most imporantly – “light”. Meaning – not therapeutic and gravely-serious, but more loose and with easy to understand content. We didn’t want to make stress a bigger deal than it already is. We wanted to show people that it’s normal, that everybody experiences it from time to time and that they’re ways to deal with it.
The results & the landing page
I created a low-fidelity mockups of the app, which served as a proof of concept, to show what we want to make and to talk with developers about the feasibility and costs. I won’t show them here, because Aga and Sebastian might want to develop the app in the future and I wouldn’t want someone to steal the whole idea.
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I also created a landing page. I really wanted to make one to show off our idea, but also to check how many people would be actually interested in the product. So I created it, explained the whole concept and allowed people to leave their e-mail so that we can let them know when the app is out.
A whopping 47% of the 180 visits to the page converted to leaving an e-mail , which was super exciting! That confirmed our beliefs that we’re onto something. I’d show you the website, but apperently the the host subscription has ended and the Institute decided not to keep the website up for now.
If it changes, I’ll link it here.
Until then, here’s a PNG i managed to snag before the website dissapeared 😅 Sorry for the bad quality...
Now what?
Our project did not win, so we didn’t receive funding for the app. However, the money wasn’t the only point of the whole program. Aga and Sebastian left with a well-conceived idea, research results and a concept that we’ve put a lot of work into. They also have a pitch, a presentation, a landing page and mockups. They are now looking for other ways of funding their app and talking to software houses about creating it.
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Overall, it was super fun to be a part of the program! Shoutout to Sektor 3.0, they do amazing work.