VapeNet

Purpose: Design for Social Impact

Role: Product Manager, UX Researcher/Designer

Year: 2021

Location: Ithaca, NY

VapeNet is a mobile application designed to help students navigate their personal quitting journeys while surrounded by the pervasive vaping culture on college campuses.

Problem: Nicotine addiction due to vaping in young adults between ages 18-25.

It is currently difficult to help young adult addicts because there is an overall disinterest in seeking help within this age group, as there is no stigma associated with this addiction. This normalizes vaping, making it harder to first recognize and subsequently combat the addiction.

User Research

We conducted contextual interviews with 5 participants in our target user group, which included both undergraduate and graduate students at Cornell University. For the purpose of this study, we defined "addicts" as anyone who uses e-cigarettes on a daily basis.

The primary goals for these interviews were to investigate and understand the following:

Participant’s attitudes toward their own addiction
Participant’s motivation for usage of e-cigarettes
Participant’s understanding of the health consequences of their own addiction
Participant’s attitudes toward quitting

We asked the participants to choose a location where they normally vape, so these interviews took place in a variety of locations including a fraternity house atrium, on campus cafés, and a home living room. Our participants were all comfortable speaking about their experiences in open settings, which reinforced our initial findings on the normalization of vaping.

Insights

After affinity diagramming, we gathered the following main insights:

Health Consequences	Our user group has limited knowledge on the health consequences of vaping and thus speak about the consequences in a joking manner. When we asked participants about their knowledge of health consequences, they often laughed or responded vaguely, saying that no one knows about the long-term effects of e-cigarettes yet because they are so new.
Other Substances	The use of other substances can affect one’s desire to use an e-cigarette. Alcohol in particular seems to be the most significant factor in the usage of e-cigarettes, since every participant in our user group, except one, stated that consuming alcohol makes them crave e-cigarettes more.
Social Pressure	The hype around e-cigarettes and its prevalence in campus living (amongst friends, in parties etc.) is a major factor in influencing people to continue vaping. Participants indicated that it is very hard to resist their urge when they are around others who are also using their e-cigarettes. One of the main reasons is the common practice of sharing vapes with each other.
Discretion	The inconspicuous and compact nature of e-cigarettes promotes their use in users aged 18-25. All participants indicated that they hide their use from their parents/ family. Many participants thus repeatedly stated convenience as their number one factor for using e-cigarettes.

Persona

From our insights, we developed the following target user persona:

Designing

We began the next phase of our design process by researching existing solutions. We categorized these solutions into 4 categories:

Nicotine Replacement Therapy (nicotine gum, prescribed inhalers, lozenges, patches and Zyn nicotine pouches)
Physical Solutions (HealthVapes)
Social Solutions (Quitlines, messaging services)
Technological Solutions (Apps such as QuitNow!, Smoke Free, and Habitica)

From these solutions, we determined which areas were and were not well-responded to:

Areas Well Responded To	Areas Needing Work
Finding a less harmful alternative to replace one’s addiction/habit	Finding the incentive to take the first step towards quitting
Getting information about the first steps to quitting	Staying motivated to quit while surrounded by people who vape
Tracking progress as you quit	Connecting with other people who are facing a similar situation
Maintaining discretion through the process	Finding comprehensive resources to understand health implications from a reputed source

Brainstorming and Idea Selection

After whiteboarding and narrowing down each group member’s ideas, we arrived at three top idea categories: financials, motivators and social connections. Our final solution combined these three ideas in a mobile application that can be utilized throughout a user’s quitting journey. The main goals of our solution are as follows:

Connect similar users who can support one another through their quitting journeys
Provide ongoing motivation to users during social events to stay away from e-cigarettes
Help users reduce their spending on e-cigarettes and refills

Our Solution

Our solution, VapeNet, uses the metaphor of a dating application to incentivize the user to try it out. The “Matching” section will be like that of popular applications such as Tinder or Bumble with the interaction of swiping left or right on people. A “Find Nearby” section will allow users to immediately find other quitters at social events. Finally, the “Chat” section houses the user’s current matches with whom they can chat.

Mid-Fi Prototyping

In response to feedback we received from paper prototype evaluations, our medium-fidelity prototype included the following changes:

More precise input prompts for profile creation to add constraints to user interaction
Increased size and included signifiers for buttons on matching page
Signifiers for online/offline users on the chat page
Toggle to share location on Find Nearby page to give users more privacy when desired

Evaluation Metrics

Satisfaction

We measured satisfaction on a scale from 0-5, and our participants averaged a level of satisfaction of 3.625. Some users felt that sections of the profile were irrelevant to their decision-making on the matching page.

Learnability

Social Connectedness

Fit Within Existing Practice

Final Hi-Fi Prototype

Our final, high-fidelity prototype incorporates suggestions from our user evaluations, most notably:

Re-designing the profiles on the matching screen: We added a drop shadow to the achievement button to signify the affordance of clicking. We also altered the timeline due to readability problems. Finally, we received feedback that there was a lack of a succinct theme. We created a new color palette and standardized the font size to address this.
Re-wording onboarding input fields: Users had varying inputs based on the prompts during the profile creation. We made the labels more specific to combat this. We also changed input fields from all keyboards to various buttons and drop down menus to constrain the users to their options.
Posting one’s location on the Find Nearby page: We added feedback after the users post their description, and we also changed the name of this box to make the intended input more clear. Finally, we added a filter so that users can specify how private they want their location to be. With the filter, they can share to everyone on VapeNet or to friends only.