Lean on me
2013 May - 2014 Jun
By leveraging the power of our social networks, we can help people break habits easier and faster. Research have shown that people are more likely to complete difficult tasks with the support from friends. LeanOnMe is an app to help people quit smoking with their friends.
The Stats
There has been much research done in B.C Canada which shows that the health costs related to keeping smokers out of the hospital is extremely high. It would be more cost efficient to develop a product to help.
GUERILLA RESEARCH / MARKETING
It was key to speak with smokers and supporters to understand what the needs were. We set
up booths at various events and spoke with hundreds to people to gather feedback and ideas.
Development
Before any high fidelity design or code, I spent a lot of time just working on wireframes. The focus was on creating screens that were different for smokers and supporters while refusing as much of the components as possible.
The final app’s main functionality revolved around the “Support Chat”. This is where smokers and supporters were able to communicate with each other.
I developed the native IOS app in ObjectiveC. The main chat functionality was developed as a web app. This was key as it allowed us to embed the chat application into webpages as well so that supporters who are not on their phones can still support smokers. We used services such as Heroku and Parse to develop quickly.
