Inyeon AI Journal App

Harnessing the power of journaling and building well-being

My Role: Sole UX Designer

User interview, competitor analysis, information architecture, wireframe, design system, prototype, user testing, UI iteration

12+ Months

Product Manager, Developer, UX Researcher, Marketing

Opportunity

Journaling has been proven as a powerful tool for building mental well-being. There is an opportunity to make journaling more accessible and meaningful, inviting more people to write, reflect, and cultivate self-awareness and compassion.

Background & Goals

Our vision is a world where mindfulness organically emerges as a daily practice to nurture human potential and collective well-being.

https://www.inyeon.ai

Through accessible compassionate self-reflective tools, Inyeon AI aims to cultivate the self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and meaningful connections that allow people and communities to exist in harmony.

Our role is to create spaces for presence, integrate reflection into everyday life, and facilitate the evolution of collective consciousness. We believe this path of inner work leads to greater compassion, understanding, and flourishing for all people.

Ineyon AI’s co-founders Tobi and Keiko have a goal to build a product that helps users cultivate mindfulness and compassion. Inspired by their vision, I joined their project as the UX designer.

After conducting in-depth research in the mental wellbeing space, Tobi and Keiko decided to create a mobile app that support users to build mindfulness and compassion through emotion tracking, breathing and journaling.

Research

I suggested that we conduct user research to pressure test our product ideas and understand what users want from a journaling experience.

I decided to tackle the design for the journaling feature. I first conducted a competitor analysis of the popular journal apps. There are a variety of journal apps on the market catered to different types of journal writers.

To gain deeper insights on user behaviors and motivation for journaling, I conducted interviews with 6 individuals. The interview is composed of questions on why users journal, what they typically journal about, how they prefer to journal, and what other well-being practices they perform (e.g., emotion tracking, breathing exercises).

It was critical to get user feedback early on to make sure the product is satisfying user needs. My research findings became a turning point for Inyeon.

I discovered that users find journaling a helpful practice and indicated many benefits related to building overall well-being. On the contrary, mood tracking or breathing practice is not mentioned as an important part of their well-being practice. I presented the insights to Tobi and Keiko, proposing that we focus on developing the journaling feature as the first step.

At the same time, Tobi and Keiko met with a consulting agency to discuss our product ideas and they shared the key insights from my research. They were advised to narrow the focus on and start with journaling.

Collectively, we decided to pivot Inyeon to a journaling app and put the other two ideas on our future roadmap.

It was also June 2023, when the whole world was shaken by the impact of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. We were also excited by the power of generative AI and decided to explore how we can use it in Inyeon, with the goal of better serving our users.

After we decided to leverage generative AI, I looked into a few journaling or adjacent products that already used the technology. Our team also onboarded a UX researcher, Melody, who ran some additional interviews with 30+ users to understand their thoughts on journaling and the use of AI. Combing all the research findings, here are a few key takeaways to guide the design of Inyeon:

Getting thoughts and emotions out of the heads is an important reason why people journal.

The act of writing down thoughts and feelings effectively help people process information, put things in perspectives, stop rumination, and feel relieved. All interviewees shared that they feel accomplished or relieved after completing a journal.

People run into blockers when they write down their thoughts.

Sometimes people find it difficult to dig deeper for more complex thoughts and feelings and provide enough details in the entries.

People highly value maintaining a sense of autonomy when using a product powered by AI. 

They want to understand how their information will be used and protected.

Some people hesitate to provide their information to AI.

They want to understand how their information will be used and protected.

Less is more.

Some people find it overwhelming when AI spits out too much information.

People tend to revisit their journals for various reasons. 

However, for people who use physical journals or a basic digital tool (e.g., Apple Notes app), they find it challenging to look for a specific entry since there is no way to search.

Design Vision

A tool that makes writing and reflection easier: The utilization of AI in the app aims to help users overcome writers’ blocks, dig deeper while processing their thoughts and emotions, and look back to past entries for reflection.

A safe, trustworthy place where human are in control: Users share personal thoughts, emotions, and information while journaling. It is critical to build trust between users and Inyeon so they can journal freely without hesitation. While AI is powering Inyeon, human users will remain in full control of their journaling experience.

An effortless experience: Inyeon intends to provide a stress-free, clutter-free journaling experience that gives users space to focus on their thoughts and emotions.

Early Ideation

I created low-fi wireframes to mock up the key features and in Figma, focusing on the key user actions of documenting a journal, reviewing past entries, and viewing entry insights.

  • To help users overcome writer’s block, I designed an Inspiration button that uses AI to suggest new topics or expand on what the user has written. However, after discussions with Tobi and Keiko, we decided to pause the feature that generates insights during writing to avoid creating a chatbot-like experience. A MIT and OpenAI joint study suggests that extended daily AI interactions may negatively impact real-world socialization.

  • To help users reflect in the moment, I designed an AI generated summary. It includes tags to call out the emotions observed and key topics discussed and a journal content summary, allowing users to review and reflect on what they documented. All the AI generated content will provide an option for users to make edits, giving users the full control over their journal content.

  • To meet users’ need to look back on past entries, I designed the entry viewing experience to allow users to search for key words as well as toggle between list, calendar and topic views. As I shared the initial design, I realized that I should add in sorting and filtering features to make it easier for users.

  • I designed the Insights experience as a dedicated space for users to reflect holistically on their past entries. By selecting a timeframe, users receive a summary of their journals, including key metrics, a recap of all journal entires entered during this period, and visualizations of recurring emotions and thoughts.

  • The overall design aims to be minimal, providing a distraction-free space for users to focus on the act of journaling. To help users to get through the initial barrier of writing, I provided the option for users to journal with prompts and the ability select prompts that they want to write about. 

User Testing & Iteration

I received highly positive user feedback and uncovered key insights to position Inyeon to provide greater value to users.

After multiple rounds of iterations, I developed a high-fidelity prototype in Figma and conducted virtual usability testing with three participants. Participants completed tasks by clicking through the prototype and sharing thoughts aloud. They rated the intuitiveness and helpfulness of key features on a 5-point scale. While the test focused on navigation and feature design, a key limitation was that users couldn’t input content or receive AI-generated insights.

Overall, results were strong: 100% task completion, consistently positive ratings, and all participants said they would use Inyeon once launched. 

KEY TAKEAWAY 1

Clarity in navigation & iconography needs Improvement. Prompts are valued but may be underutilized due to discovery challenges.

The average score of the level of intuitiveness of the journal navigation experience was 3.8, the lowest among all scores. All three users were confused by the lightbulb icon which was used to represent journal prompts. While prompts were seen as helpful, users had difficulty locating them.

Enhancement: Redesign the bottom navigation and relocate prompt access to the home scree to streamline the user journey. Add descriptive labels to icons, clarifying actions users can take.

KEY TAKEAWAY 2

Presenting data matters—but how it’s presented matters just as much. Users want to feel supported and encouraged, not just informed.

The data visualization of emotional trends was unanimously well-received. However, some concerns were raised about how negative patterns are communicated—for example, one user shared, “It’s hard to see that I mostly felt insecure over the past six months.”

Enhancement: Adjust the tone of Inyeon and how insights are presented to users. Introduce compassionate language and messaging, especially when presenting insights which include negative emotions and heavy topics.

KEY TAKEAWAY 3

Users want more than summaries — they want AI insights to guide their reflection.

The Insight generation feature was highly appreciated for helping users recognize and reflect on their thoughts and emotions, but participants wanted more than summaries. They desired the next level insights - tips of recognizing thought patterns, personalized suggestions, encouragement, and actionable next steps.

Enhancement: Add a “More Insights” feature to provide more interactions between users and AI, allowing users to get tailored insights after each journal. Incorporate goal collection in the onboarding experience and provide personalized feedback related to user goals.

I presented this feedback and the initial enhancement to the team. The team agreed with the addition of the goal collection feature. However, to my surprise, I didn’t receive immediate head nods on the “More Insights” feature. The team raised concerns around this feature heading into the AI chat territory or AI therapy, which we want to avoid. There are also potential legal and liability issues if AI “prescribes” solutions to users.

I decided to go back to the drawing board and facilitate a Crazy Eights exercise with the team to ideate. How might we provide valuable and personalized feedback to users within each journal experience without creating an AI chat experience?

While it is important to represent what the users want, I also shouldn’t lose sight of our product’s vision. Sometimes it means we cannot check off every request that users make.

Wireframes

Check out the final wireframes of Inyeon

  • Home

  • Journal Input

  • Journal Entry Insight Generation

  • Inspiration & Prompts

Constraints

I worked within the constraints on the project to produce the best design possible.

  • There is limited time to dedicate to this project. Since this is not a full-time job for any of us, I accepted that we will take the time we need to develop a Minimum Lovable Product (MLP) without burning ourselves out. Otherwise, we are not setting a good example as a startup focusing on well-being! I facilitated intentional design review and team discussions to gather feedback.

  • With the lean team of 5, it will take multiple releases to achieve our vision. I had in-depth feature discussions with the team and aligned on the critical features to include in the MLP. For the first launch, our scope is to build a journaling app that offers the key features that support users’ journal practice and a few preliminary AI features (e.g., journal summary, entry insights) to power up this experience.

Outcome

…

We shared the final prototype with 30 people who currently practice journaling and ask if they would download and use this app for journaling. We received a 100% yes.

The team felt confident with the current design and decided to move into development.

What’s Next for Inyeon

  1. Hand-off current design to our developer to start development

  2. Continue to complete design for other key user flows (e.g., edit account information, onboarding)

  3. Continue to ideate on several features from a scalability standpoint (e.g., filter experience - number of topics and emotions).

  4. Align on the final features to be included in the MVP and determine which features

Reflection

What went well:

  • …

  • …

What I wish I had done differently:

  • While the focus of this test is on the navigation and feature design, the limitation of this test was that users weren’t able to type in their content and receive AI generated summary and insights based on their input. 

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