I started designing my website by knowing who are my target users and thought of some of the reason of why they need to calm down. The one and half month individual project includes the following processes and methodologies:

Nowadays, with the rapid pace of life and the increasing pressure of people, many people are suffering from an anxiety disorder. According to my research, I find that most people feel anxious or stressful for a while but can calm themselves down so it doesn’t change their lives too much. But for some people feeling anxious can take over their lives and stop them doing the things they want to do.

It is difficult for people to fall asleep when they feel anxious, they may be tired because of thinking too much in bed, or their brains keep turning. At work, if people can not maintain a good mentality, it is also easy to lose focus, so that the work efficiency is greatly reduced, finally affecting their mood.

I did a quick web search for “how to calm down.” A Google search came up with 664,000,000 responses. That number, without even looking at the results themselves, tells us that this is a problem that many people care about, and people desperately want to find ways to unwind. However,it is hard. We live in a world that makes it hard to really unwind. The demands of daily life are intense and never ending. So many people have come to equate success with achievement, and achievement with happiness. Furthermore, research has shown that stress, anxiety and depression, which come on the heels of this kind of non-stop pressure to achieve, physically interfere with the body’s relaxation mechanisms. And of course focusing on relaxation as yet another high pressure goal (I must relax, I must relax, I must relax) is not going to cut it.

When people feel anxious they can sweat more, feel tense, feel pain, find it hard to breathe and feel dizzy. While perhaps most recognized for behavioral changes, anxiety can also have serious consequences on your physical health.

Based on my research, I found that listening to some soft music and nature sounds can help people feel relax and calm down, so I wanted to create a website have the combination of music and nature sounds, which can give users the peaceful mood. It contained the following three features:

1. Relaxation mix: nature sounds with musical instruments

• It’s most suitable for sleeping, relax, yoga, meditation, stress relief, overcoming anxiety and insomnia.
• It can also satisfy the needs of some people who like to listen to the sounds of nature.

2. Save to favorite list

• Easy and quick listening entry

3. Simple and intuitive user interface

• Helps users calm down quickly and easily

When I decided on the idea of this website, I first went to understand the similar apps and websites on the market, and found that their common points are simple and tidy pages, because the function of this website is not complex, that is just to let users choose their favorite voices to listen to, help them calm down faster, so I decided to use simple flat illustrations to visually make users feel stress relief.

When I decided on the idea of this website, I first went to understand the similar apps and websites on the market, and found that their common points are simple and tidy pages, because the function of this website is not complex, that is just to let users choose their favorite voices to listen to, help them calm down faster, so I decided to use simple flat illustrations to visually make users feel stress relief.

In order to get suggestions for website improvement before testing, I first found 4 participants who are willing to help me to do the test among the target users. I first introduced what my website is doing to them, then let them complete the three tasks I set, and I encouraged them to tell me if they have any questions and ideas while the testing conducting. ( Testing Results)

I think a little bit programming background should be much help for a user experience designer. When we design, we might only consider how to arrange and place the content, what and where, and may not consider whether it is too far away from the effect we can achieve. But if we've learned some programming skills, we won't design functions that we can't achieve, and we are able to do the coded mockups by ourselves.