Nicotine is a legal drug and tobacco companies make money on people’s addiction, weakness and health.

Over than half of smokers want to quit, but less than 10% of them succeed.

We are facing the problem here, that smokers pay for their weakness to both tobacco companies and instruments to quit. It is a lose-lose situation, just choosing the cheaper evil.

My task was to build a proper application that can help to increase the number of people who succeeded in quitting and create the solution to marrying business and acute social problems. This app should be free for smokers and should find different ways of monetization to stay viable as a business.

What experience should this application provide to become an effective platform to change people’s behavior and what business possibilities should it contain?

So anyone can attempt to quit and the business can make money and still change the world for the better.

I started with assumptions to provide all of the important info that is used in building this app. Surfacing assumptions is an important first step in Lean UX. This checklist is a useful guide to help to surface assumptions. They are the high-level facts identified we believe to be true.

They are assumptions related to customers, priorities, business models, and ways to achieve declared goals.

Business assumptions

User assumptions contain beliefs or expectations based on what we know about our users. Proto personas are a lightweight form of ad-hoc personas created with no new research.

User assumptions / Proto Personas

My assumptions will be validated by running surveys with my potential audience. Also, I will conduct market research to measure the demand and viability of this business idea, and competitor analysis to indicate the strengths and weaknesses of the existing solutions in the market to create a better product.

Validating assumptions

Based on the collected insights, I will build an MVP and iterate the Lean UX process to refine the product.

Competitor analysis allows finding not only the strengths and weaknesses of competitors but also if there are any gaps in the market. For example, through research, we may discover a feature that competitors' products do not have.

There are a lot of applications in the market helping to quit smoking. But we are still facing the problem here: smokers pay for their weakness to both tobacco companies and instruments to quit. It is a lose-lose situation, just choosing the cheaper evil.

Market key insight

I created 3 different surveys for 3 segments of auditoria to validate assumptions and find new app improvement ideas.

I wanted to understand their perspective on how they see smokers and what they assume will help them to quit.

Non-smokers survey / 21 people participated

I needed to understand why they smoke, do they have the desire to quit, and what will help them to succeed.

Smokers survey / 22 people participated

The last and the most interesting ones are people who succeeded in quitting. I need their experience to understand which assumptions are viable and have the highest conversion in success.

Succeeded in quitting / 12 people participated

Accurate, actionable, survey data is key to understanding, anticipating, and fulfilling customers' needs. So, these are key insights I gathered.

Community matters in terms of quitting, but it’s not the #1 value a customer wants from this product as I assumed in the beginning.

Community

I need to focus on such features as analyzing cravings and need to find out how I can help to cope with stress through my app. Because it’s one of the biggest challenges smokers face every day.

Cravings analyzing

Due to the survey, often willpower is the deciding factor in the success of quitting smoke. Willpower is a limited resource in everyday life. So I’m gonna add features that will maintain the level of motivation and will measure results to keep the user's attention on quitting process.

Willpower

I can reach these results through gamification. For example, the level of oxygen in the blood has become normal, the risks of diseases have decreased, etc. Competitions among quitters also will work on this purpose.

Gamification

Lack of scientific knowledge about smoking and its influence on the smoker and the environment also causes failure in quitting process. Some people believe that they will gain weight if they quit. Some people smoke because they believe that the influence of smoking equals zero if they smoke a small number of cigarettes per day.

Scientific knowledge

Boredom is the strongest enemy during quitting process. The app itself could work on this problem. Containing notifications can keep users involved, challenges can keep users motivated and gamification can entertain.

Boredom

This is a prioritization method that involves dividing all MVP features into four groups: must have, should have, could have, and won’t have this time. It'll help to build a shared understanding of MVP's functionality.

The «must-have» group includes mandatory functionalities. The «should-have» group comprises functionalities that are not vital but still significant. The «could-have» group consists of nice-to-have functionalities. And the «won’t-have this time» group includes functionalities that are not a priority at the moment but may be added later.

I don’t need to build fundamental and comprehensive IA for this app at this stage. But I need to visualize some parts of it to build key interaction paths and create user-centered solutions to build an effective MVP.

Application mapping is the process of discovering and identifying the interactions and interdependencies between application components.

Application map

Onboarding user flow

Set the last smoked cigarette user flow

Add cravings, analyze it and get advices user flow

Based on the researches, I concluded that the most important part of the quitting process is progress tracking. It keeps users motivated and engaged.

Home page

The home page of the app consists of two parts. The first one calculates and summarises the main numbers about quitting. The number of unsmoked cigarettes, time spent without a cigarette, and the amount of saved money.

The second part focuses on the health recovery progress. This section is a feed. The ultimate goal of which is 15 years without smoking and full recovery of health. Humans are driven to have goals and then accomplish them that’s why I used progress bars here and specific decomposed health goals.

Providing an opportunity to monitor the impact of smoking cessation makes the path transparent, and interesting and builds trust with the user.

To break the vicious smoking–quitting–smoking cycle it is mandatory to understand your psychology. All “whys” need to be answered. Why do I smoke? Why do I smoke at a specific time or in specific conditions?

Cravings section

To break the vicious smoking–quitting–smokingThe Cravings section is created for these purposes exactly. Discover, define and fight the most powerful demons inside your head. If you don’t know how – there is the section inside the “List view”, where you can get scientific bits of advice about fighting specific triggers (frames are below). cycle it is mandatory to understand your psychology. All “whys” need to be answered. Why do I smoke? Why do I smoke at a specific time or in specific conditions?

Scalable graphics and filters provide an opportunity to learn about a user’s addiction in the smallest details. The more calibrated enemies are – the more chances to beat them.

It has a strong effect on app efficiency and payback.

Based on the research, boredom and stress are obstacles to quit smoking.

Stress section

Two opportunities to fight them are provided in this application. Exercises and meditations.

To make the process of choosing a suitable exercise fast and comfortable there are filters and search. This section is made as a feed that is updated by new exercises by moderators.

For an MVP version and to test the efficiency of this section it’s enough. For the next iteration of an app, I’m gonna test the idea that the “favorites” section will simplify the user experience of this page even more.

As I mentioned above, boredom is an obstacle to quitting smoking way. To make the process interesting, entertaining, and challenging I added gamification.

Rewards section

In the Rewards section, there is a feed with achievements with educational or entertaining parts. When a user reaches a goal then a unique, scientific, motivating article related to the topic of the achievement becomes available.

In this way, users engage in daily use of the app. And has been motivated to continue the challenging path of quitting smoking. Win-win model and this is the goal I’m chasing.

During the next iteration, I’m planning to improve this section by adding another partition inside. Would be great to test the community part, starting with competitions among friends and friends rating during quitting.

I believe, this application has strong potential to evolve into a profitable business by using the business model that I suggested in the “business assumptions” part of that case study.

I'm looking forward to releasing the MVP to collect and analyze user’s feedback. It’ll help to find the strengths and weaknesses of the app and improve providing experience.