Individual Moodboards
Lavender
For my moodboard and style tiles, I wanted to encompass two feelings: accountability and encouragement. Since our app is focused on encouraging a decrease of usage on TikTok through a friend, I thought the main vibe of the app should be darker/sleek with accents of color to represent the users that want to help themselves/their friends decrease TikTok usage. That is why I focused on bold lettering that stands out against a dark background to emphasize the authoritative aspect of screen time accountability, but also included vibrant colors to represent the more fun aspect of going through this with your friends.
Some pros of this design are that it really emphasizes the organization and authoritative aspect of the app. However, some cons are that users might not be encouraged to continue using the app if it is this firm.
Julia
For this moodboard, I wanted to challenge the notion that screen time related apps can only be punitive and not fun. Thus, I added lots of color and fun things like candy and piñatas to my mood board. However, since our app must encourage people to make a difficult choice, I also wanted the app to have some authority, which is why I added Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet, some princesses, and a man sitting behind a large desk.
The pros of this moodboard are about its nuanced approach to screen time control via fun and the colorful aspect. The cons of this moodboard are that the idea is quite scattered and it may be hard to execute the combination of fun with authority.
Yubin
For this moodboard, I wanted to encompass two big themes: a vibrant, optimistic, young energy but a firm and productive emphasis. Since our app is fundamentally a productivity application (firm) but targets TikTok usage among gen-z (young, energetic), I wanted to encompass both spheres in my moodboard: computers, futuristic figures, but colorful thought-bubbles and adventurous. Some pros with my mood board include effectively capturing a vibrant, young energy, which is encouraging and optimistic for our college student user base. Some cons with my moodboard, however, is that perhaps it is weighed too heavily on adventure/fun, as opposed to stopping an addictive social media behavior and encouraging productivity. It may have been better-balanced with images that specifically targeted focus and productivity among college students and their use of technology, as opposed to a mere computer.
Amber
For this moodboard, I wanted to emulate authoritative energy that would encourage users to stick to the goals that they set for themselves. One of the primary areas of improvement identified in our baseline and intervention studies was accountability. I focused on a more serious color scheme paired with professional serif fonts. The pros of this mood board include 1) a feeling of trust and security, and 2) a vibe of authority to help people stay on track with their goals. However, the board is not necessarily appealing to the target demographic of college aged students.
Alex
For my moodboard, I wanted to emphasize feelings of positivity and organization because that’s how I want our users to feel as they gradually reduce their TikTok usage and take back control of their life. This way they continue to become motivated by their progress with TikTok usage and continue to feel happy every time they interact with our app, even though it technically is a negative interaction where they are being prevented from accessing their TikTok. I was also not in class, so my moodboard was created digitally!
I think some advantages of this moodboard would be that it has a very aesthetic and clean feel to it. Hopefully, that would provide a refreshing experience every time they interact with our app. However, one disadvantage is that the lighter color palette may make some of the text a bit harder to see, especially if we resort to using lighter white text. Therefore, we likely would have to stick to a lot of black text for our UI. In addition, it may be a bit off-putting to see such a colorful app for something that’s monitoring you and telling you that you can’t use certain apps.
Final Moodboard
Reasons behind final moodboard:
We generated our collective mood board by combining critical aspects from each of our individual mood boards. Julia’s mood board highlighted the more whimsical aspects of what our app should look like, contributing a more optimistic flair. Amber’s mood board introduced a firm/authoritative vibe that reinforces the goal of our solution. Lavender’s mood board demonstrated a vibrant but authoritative tone to the app. Yubin’s mood board introduced trendy themes, which helps with appeal to our target demographic. Alex’s mood board focused a more positive and energetic approach to the mood board, emphasizing how users would feel as they continue to improve.
For our color palette, we decided to go with different shades of mint (darker, pastel, brighter), with a brown base as our text. We thought that mint fit the adjectives of our app the best – optimistic, uplifting, and fun – which also worked cohesively with our brown color, which is more authoritative and firm. Mint is also the accent color of our target application, TikTok, which we believed was a nice way to maintain consistency and coherence.
The adjectives we decided to use encompass a mix of all of our ideas so that the app is fun and encouraging to use, but also reminds you to hold yourself and your friends accountable if you are assigned to be their TikTok buddy. To represent this idea, we chose adjectives such as optimistic and organized, and firm but empowering. We really wanted to hone in on the juxtaposition of the fun but accountable app, so users can enjoy but get definitive results from using it.
When choosing our font style, we wanted something relatively clean and modern looking, given the younger audience that we are interacting with. The style we went with is also sans-serif, which helps with the direction we are trying to head in. In addition, just from an aesthetic perspective, we liked the relatively geometric and rounded lettering that the font provided!
