Team
Taylor Leslie, Lexi Berryhill, Maddie Stein
Tools
Figma, FigJam, Illustrator, Pen + Paper
Role
User Research, UX Design, Prototyping
The Center
Overview
Problem
The Center is an organization that aims to offer free reproductive healthcare to individuals in need. However, their current website does not adequately support patients because it lacks information about their services and does not provide an intuitive or convenient way to schedule appointments. To address these issues, my team aimed to redesign The Center's website to make reproductive health education more accessible, stress-free, and approachable for visitors.
Outcome
UX Fest SLO is an educational event and design competition that takes place annually at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Participants are given 24 hours to design a prototype for a mobile application or web experience. The challenge prompt for this year's event was to create an original mobile application or web experience for a SLO local business of your choice.
My team, and I successfully won the competition against 50 other competitors. The current next step is to implement this application into The Center’s patient experience flow.
Research
Problem Statement
The current website of The Center provides only a single page for individuals who wish to learn about their resources. The process of scheduling appointments and obtaining information requires users to call during open hours, leading to inconvenience and lack of privacy. As a result, there is a pressing need to address this issue and develop a more user-friendly, efficient, and discrete means of accessing The Center's services.
Background Research
To initiate our research process, we began by gaining knowledge about the current services offered by The Center and the ways in which visitors could access these resources. To capture all the information we could find about The Center, we utilized a jam board.
User Research
Through user interviews, we aimed to gather insights into users' perceptions and preferences regarding reproductive health services and mobile applications. Participants were asked open-ended questions, such as "What factors contribute to your experience of stress or comfort when seeking reproductive health services?" and "How would you cope with a situation requiring urgent care for a UTI outside of normal business hours?" These responses were recorded to gain a deeper understanding of user needs and preferences. From there, we made an empathy map to visually display our findings.
User Personas
To guide our design process and identify key task flows, we created personas. We conducted research on The Center and other reproductive, sexual health and well-being clinics to gain insight into their patient base. The most insightful part of the research was when we interviewed students at Cal Poly who were patients of the Center to gain a better understanding of their needs and frustrations.
“How Might We” Statement
We used insights from our interviews to develop an empathetic statement, user-centric goal and generate a set of prioritized "how might we..." statements through a team voting process.
How might we make learning and accessing The Center’s offerings an anxiety free, accessible, and an understandable experience?
Competitor Analysis
To assess the effectiveness of their current record-keeping and reproductive education solutions, The Center utilizes Healow for maintaining health records of their existing patients. Therefore, we examined both Healow and Planned Parenthood's apps to gain insights into the existing solutions.
In analyzing user reviews and available online resources, we identified several issues with The Center's existing app. Here were the most prominent issues:
Non-localized pharmacy options require users to scroll through all pharmacies in the country.
Messaging is scattered across multiple screens, making it difficult to navigate.
Interface is outdated and does not speak the user’s language
Healow App
We downloaded and reviewed the Planned Parenthood app ourselves and utilized user reviews to utilize in our design. We established what we liked and things to avoid when reviewing the app:
Prioritize an in-app experience for FAQ and Health Center Appointments
Included a survey on the home page for Birth Control, UTI, and Plan B to match users with the right medications and procedures.
Reviewers appreciated the speed and convenience of online healthcare, which we aim to replicate in our design
We were inspired to implement an AI-powered chatbot to address users' questions after-hours.
Planned Parenthood
After conducting background research and competitor analysis, we agreed on five main features:
Appointment booking portal
Chat bot to answer immediate questions
FAQ section
education on reproductive sexual health and wellbeing services offered
Profile with updated medical information and documentation
App Features
Design Process
Wireframes
Collaboratively, we wireframed every section of the design, ensuring that each component met the users' requirements. Although all of us contributed to every screen, for time constraint purposes I mainly concentrated on the sexual health and well-being education screens, home screens, and chat bot feature.
Since we were on a time constraint, we immediately went to sketching after conducting our research. The first image below is a process photo of us sketching in the engineering lab at Cal Poly. The second image is a scan of our initial screen sketches.
Problem
Style Guidelines
Our goal was to reflect the relaxed, inclusive, and inviting atmosphere we want our users to experience through our app's appearance. We accomplished this by selecting a typeface that prioritizes legibility and adhering to the WCAG guidelines on color and size. We opted for soft yet lively colors to convey a sense of warmth and ease.
Hi-Fi and User Feedback
After creating a design guideline, we proceeded to iterate our low-fidelity screens to high-fidelity flows. Throughout this phase, we sought feedback from five potential users to help us identify areas of confusion and determine which elements looked visually appealing. Here is some of the feedback we received that we incorporated into our design to refine our product.
Design System
We created a design system that included components, icons, and buttons that could all be updated quickly and conveniently throughout iterations of our screen designs. The navigation was specifically focused on as it is featured on all screens and bles
After taking all of the feedback received into consideration and designing for 24 hours straight, we finished our final screen designs!
View our prototype on Figma
Presentation
Our final screen designs earned us a spot out of eight teams to present to the judges. I thought it was an amazing opportunity to receive feedback from the judges and explain our design thinking strategies.
Outcome
We placed first out of eighty other participants! It was a fantastic feeling to succeed in something I love doing with other designers, whom I call my friends. Here are some photos of us celebrating. 🥳
Takeaways
Reflection
Here are some of my immediate key takeaways from participating in the UX fest and creating an application for patients to help a sexual health and well-being clinic:
Competition helped realize capabilities in short timeframes.
User feedback early and often is important.
Interviewing potential users provides insight on user needs.
Designers are not the users; listen to user needs.
Putting users first improves work.
Solution has potential to make positive impact on healthcare
Enjoyed working on a project with my friends
This was one of the unique experiences I have ever been a part of. I had never created a prototype, but in less than 24 hours, I got to do what I love with two of my best friends in college and ultimately create something I genuinely care about- a digital healthcare application. We continue to work on this project and have plans to present our prototype to The Center to gather their feedback. Ideally, we would have preferred more user testing and research, but the time limit prevented that. I am so grateful for this experience, and I thank all the outstanding students for putting on the event and the judges for lending time to share their expertise.