An App to Support Yoga Teachers to Implement a Yoga-Based Approach to Promote Wellbeing Among Young People: Usability Study

Abstract

Many young people suffer from chronic stress and other issues that inhibit the functioning and development of the prefrontal cortex, and this also affects their intrinsic motivation to engage in any activity. In short, unless their well-being is addressed, they cannot engage effectively. The HIPPOCAMPUS project aims to address these issues by promoting the well-being of young people through the practice of a range of techniques derived from yoga. Yuva Yoga app is part of the approach to support the yoga-based practices with young people. It is a multiplatform mobile app developed as Backend as a Service both for Android and iOS. The first public version of the mobile app is part of the pilots implemented in the schools involved in the project, but there is not a special focus on the usability of the app. This work presents the heuristic evaluation of Yuva Yoga for iOS carried out by four experts as part of a major usability study that combines heuristic techniques, both iOS and Android, and empirical methods with users. Some problems were detected during the evaluation, but more of the problems have a low priority rating. They are mainly cosmetic problems that do not need to be fixed unless extra time is available on the project, or minor usability problems. The results have provided an important input to develop a new minor version of the mobile app, in order to improve the user experience in the pilots at schools.