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Balance Meditation Website
UX Accessibility Coursework Project /2025
Accessibility (WCAG)
Usability Testing
UX Research
Interaction Design
When calm becomes friction
The Challenge
Balance offers science-backed meditation content, but the website experience introduced friction that disrupted calm and continuity. Returning users struggled to log in and resume sessions, navigation lacked recovery paths, and accessibility gaps made core actions harder to complete. These issues weren't cosmetic, they directly affected task success, trust, and inclusivity.
Why this matters?: For a wellness product, friction undermines the core value proposition, the ease, calm, and consistency users came for in the first place.
What I Set Out To Learn
I approached this redesign with three guiding questions:
"Where do users experience friction when trying to resume or continue meditation?"
"How do navigation and IA choices impact discoverability and confidence?"
"Which accessibility gaps meaningfully affect task completion?"
Research & Concept Exploration
Methods used were Heuristic Evaluation (Nielsen), WCAG Accessibility Audit, User Surveys, Task-based Usability Testing, and Personas & Journey Mapping.
Key Findings
Across methods, the same patterns emerged: returning users lost their place, recovery paths were missing, and accessibility gaps compounded confusion for users who most needed clarity.
Design Strategy
Rather than redesigning the entire interface, I focused on strategic interventions that improved continuity, clarity, and accessibility, without increasing cognitive load. \
Accessibility was treated as a core design constraint, not a checklist at the end.
I audited contrast, focus order, keyboard navigation, and semantic clarity, and integrated WCAG-aligned fixes directly into the interaction design.
Impact & Validation
While this was a conceptual redesign, usability testing and peer review indicated clearer navigation, reduced confusion, and faster task completion for core flows.
Learnings
This project reinforced how small structural decisions, recovery paths, accessibility, focus order, can dramatically change how calm or frustrating an experience feels. In wellness design especially, the invisible scaffolding matters more than the visible surface.
What I'd Do Next
With engineering collaboration, I'd validate these changes through A/B testing, expand accessibility testing with assistive-technology users, and explore personalization to support long-term engagement.
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