Good Earthling
native mobile app
concept
Challenge x outcome
The app was born out of a request from the head of a creative agency who approached me with the idea of a concept project aimed at garnering new clients. His idea: What if an environmentally-centered, cutting-edge company like Tesla created a credit card in the year 2033 — what would it do? How would it transform its owner? What problems would it solve?
With this, “Good Earthling” was imagined as a speculative reinterpretation of a credit product merged with health tech to be a holistic and human-centered companion app.
With this, “Good Earthling” was imagined as a speculative reinterpretation of a credit product merged with health tech to be a holistic and human-centered companion app.
timeline
November 2022 - December 2022
Chapter 1: tenet
‘Questions are the answers’ and how I started with a solution instead of a problem
With the concept prompt in mind, I benchmarked key benefits and value propositions of existing banking solutions, thinking through what tech advances of the future could bring.
Having maximum creative freedom and tasked with imagining a mobile app that tickled the curiosity of its viewers, I tested ideas by interviewing friends and acquaintances about the problems they experience when dealing with their financial health.
Having maximum creative freedom and tasked with imagining a mobile app that tickled the curiosity of its viewers, I tested ideas by interviewing friends and acquaintances about the problems they experience when dealing with their financial health.
Key pain points
1
Various banking products are decentralized and follow different mental models for assessing progress.
1
Decentralized banking products
2
Lack of strategic ‘smart’ guidance
2
Lack of actionable and strategic guidance towards a user-defined goal. A disconnect between the robotic app prompts and real-world prospects available to the account holder/user.
3
Visually littered interfaces with misaligned priorities for CTAs between the user and the business behind the app.
3
Robotic handling of people’s data
The insights I gathered from both the user interviews and competitor benchmarking kept returning me back to idea of ‘financial health’ that so many people are striving to achieve. However, the definition of what that meant differed from person to person. Through deeper conversations and social-issue awareness I realized I wanted to challenge the notion of capital as a single asset measured by accumulated dollars.
Then:
Finances as a single measure of a person’s capital
→
now:
A new holistic model representing several ‘assets’ making up a person’s capital
Asking interviewees more general questions about what they value and care about in life, I was able to distill four key aspects that came up in one way or another with every single person. These were Mental wellness and Peace of mind, Physical health and wellbeing, Cognitive agility and health, and of course, Financial health.
Problem
Siloed and disconnected concept of health where financial, emotional, physical wellbeing metrics and data are scattered across different platforms and follow various mental models
↓
goal
Imagining a system where one’s entire all-encompassing health is conveniently found, tracked, and optimized, in a single place
Chapter 2: architecture
Four assets, three aspects, one holistic health
Good Earthling shows one’s entire capital as made up by four assets reflecting Mental, Physical, Cognitive and Financial wellbeing.
Four concentric flora rings represent four assets now making up one’s holistic health and capital
Each circumference is made of individual flowers, leaves, and grass, representing unique activities of each asset category. Each ring is also a unique QR-code to one’s asset address. Like a fingerprint, they cannot be duplicated because no two people would have the same activities done in the same sequence.
In order to allow for distinct “smart guidance” (actionable personalized advice) Good Earthling divides the four assets into three aspects — Health, Goals, Praxis — that are individually evaluated and contributed to, making the progress towards users’ goals transparent and encouraging.
assets show a synthesized evaluation of 3 aspects
#1
Health
Confluence of biomarkers and other metric data
#2
Goals
Progress towards user-defined goals and goal activity
#3
Praxis
VR and AR educational and entertaining in-app experiences
implementing user testing findings
To decrease the information overload in the final designs I followed the convention of progressive disclosure and leveraged Hick’s Law with AI-based prompts by showing fewer options to nudge more users to take an action when prompted.
By leveraging Fitt’s Law in element design, Good Earthling makes its larger and closer-together elements easier and more pleasant to interact with.
User testing the initial prototypes showed that I needed to rethink data visualization and disclosure to minimize cognitive load
Decreasing cognitive load with progressive disclosure and surfaced actionable insights in the main asset page flows
Chapter 3: art direction
Let’s run an experiment...
Picture in your mind’s eye an interface of the future. Try to see its color scheme, elements, and font choices.
Now tell me, — was it the typical sci-fi retro-futuristic UI against a dark background littered with hundreds of tiny controls scattered next to each other on a limitless panel? Highlighted by neon-bright backlights. Strictly un-expressive typography, authoritarian-looking straight lines and robotic data visualizations?
If so, you’re not alone. Googling it will bring up all of these UI tropes that have always made me feel like these applications are more apt to communicate and interact with other computers, not humans.
Now tell me, — was it the typical sci-fi retro-futuristic UI against a dark background littered with hundreds of tiny controls scattered next to each other on a limitless panel? Highlighted by neon-bright backlights. Strictly un-expressive typography, authoritarian-looking straight lines and robotic data visualizations?
If so, you’re not alone. Googling it will bring up all of these UI tropes that have always made me feel like these applications are more apt to communicate and interact with other computers, not humans.
Ones and zeros, retro-futurism, anxiety-provoking information mess
A window into the Garden of Eden
Driven by the notion of inter-connectedness of life, and nature as the keystone of humanity — I wanted to redefine what ‘the cool’ way to visualize data could be.
No — to inherently digital scatters of particles. Yes — to organic shapes and living objects that humans have evolved to live next to and depend on over centuries.
What if instead of facing a faceless app screen, you could see a door into the digital “Garden of Eden” — a breath of fresh air amidst anxious concrete jungle of a big city of the future.
Imagine feeling grounded and soothed by checking the app on your phone. Seeing how the flowers are blooming and growing representing your effort towards your goals.
Imagine feeling grounded and soothed by checking the app on your phone. Seeing how the flowers are blooming and growing representing your effort towards your goals.
