TimeOut!

Product Experience

Problem Statement  

The average person needs to increase the amount of time they spend outdoors, because time in nature reinforces healthy habits and improves mental health.

Problem Background  

Various studies show that spending time outside is beneficial to both mental health and physical wellbeing. This includes strenuous efforts like exercise and sports, as well as more leisurely activities like reading a book, socializing at a park, gardening or going for a walk. Unfortunately for the average person, life tends to get in the way of them spending more quality time outdoors. Other times there might just be a complete lack of motivation to leave the comfort of one’s home. Whatever the reason may be, the problem has been getting worse in recent decades.

Research Insights
We performed an online survey of 40 participants, in which 62% of all participants estimate that they spend less than 240 minutes outside on a weekly basis. When asked to rate their level of satisfaction with the amount of time that they currently spend outdoors, only 48% of participants responded with “Satisfied” or “Very Satisfied.” This means that more than half of our participants felt that there was room for improvement.

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For reference, if you set aside at least 30 minutes a day to spend time outdoors, that would add up to 210 minutes at the end of the week. Interestingly enough when we asked our participants what amount of time outside they thought most people should be striving for, the consensus was around 60 minutes a day as the ideal, or 420 minutes for the week.

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We asked our participants to give examples of what tends to stop them from spending more time outdoors. We had our assumptions of what some of the deterrents might be. The survey responses confirmed that work, weather, and family obligations were the top 3 most likely deterrents - in that order. 

‍Proposed Solution
Key characteristics of our mobile app
For our MVP:

• Simple and easy to use interface to start, stop & save your outside timer.
• Built in analytics to keep users informed of how much time they’ve spent outdoors this week, last week, or last month.‍

‍In the Future:

We want to foster a community where our users can cheer on and challenge one another to want to do better

• Allow users to set personal goals, along with customizable reporting metrics (daily, weekly, monthly) to track progress.
• Ability to create group challenges, along with competition leaderboards and badges.
• Implement a share to social media button to empower users to share their progress and their wins.
• Push notifications to remind the user to go outside.
• Activity trend analysis and forecasting.

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