My Role
User Experience Design, UI Design, Interaction, Usability Test
Practices
Mobile First Design,
UX Design, HealthTech
Tools
Figma
Miro
Date
September 2021
Doula is an app aimed and expecting mothers to help them throughout their journey by helping them improve their physical and mental wellbeing, give them easy access to reliable information and connect them with their community and medical professionals.
Project Overview
By taking the user-centred design approach for this project we reflect our aim to prioritize user needs and preferences. By involving users throughout the design process, we ensure that our solutions directly address their challenges and desires. This approach leads to more intuitive and effective outcomes as it integrates user feedback, resulting in solutions that truly resonate with their intended audience.
The Problem
Black women are still four times more likely than white women to die in pregnancy or childbirth in the UK, and women from Asian ethnic backgrounds face twice the risk, according to a new report.
Definining the problem
User Interviews
After gathering some initial research I conducted a range of unstructured interviews with my target users. I was able to talk to black women aged 24-35 who had given birth in the UK, about their experiences throughout their pregnancy from conception through to labour and aftercare. I particularly enjoyed this part of the process as it allowed me to empathise with the experiences of these women which drove me to want to help solve for them even more.
Competitor Analysis
I did some research into how other products were tackling similar issues to the ones I had discovered. I made notes of the things that worked well and others that didn’t work so well. We used the app store reviews to gain an understanding of what features users were praising and the ones they disliked.
> Poor information architecture
(More Tab)
> Medical look
Cons
> Feature rich
> Friendly Copywriting
> Focusing on the baby and mom
Pros
Philips Digital
> Basic data visualisation
> Typeface might not be accessible
Cons
Pros
Freya
> Pay wall
> Limited pregnancy features
Cons
> Good UI (Beige)
> Chronological layout
> Saving articles
> Community via 'Secret Chats'
Pros
Flo
Flo Health ltd
Defining the Problem
The research revealed some common pain points such as:
> Poor communication with medical professionals
> Lack of easy access to important information
> Sharing experiences with other women
> All-around physical and mental well-being.
At this stage, we started to explore how we could best address these pain points.
User Personas
Based on the responses from the user research I was able to create three main user personas which I used as realistic representations of my user group for reference throughout my design process. Creating personas allowed us to build user scenarios that shaped how users may interact with the features of the application.
Idiating solutions
We came up with the main concept of our app ‘a digital doula’ to address the user pain points through this.
> Doulas are commonly thought of as birth coaches to help women through the difficult childbirth experience and the aftermath.
> Doulas give emotional, informational and even physical support to women.
> Women are reporting being relaxed and calm during birth and having a more positive birthing experience.
Information Architecture
Establishing strategic information architecture decisions was something we found challenging at first as there were so many important features so organising and labelling them to support findability and usability was quite challenging.
The goal was to create simple navigation for our users. The information architecture took a few tries to get to a level we were collectively happy with.
Sketches and Wireframes
Design Process
After establishing the architecture, I began exploring interaction approaches and design concepts. My paper sketches were used to translate my thoughts for each screen onto paper. I did a few rounds of paper sketches to visualise different approaches to each screen.
This stage allowed us to visualise our thoughts and collaborate on different approaches and idea
Moving from paper sketches to wireframes allowed us to get a more real sense of how our ideas would work on a screen and to scale, while still allowing us to make iterations efficiently.
User Interface Design
Based on some studies on our target audiences' colour preferences and common colour connotations we chose our main colour and colour scheme for a consistent look.
Colours
Roboto was chosen as our main typeface for a number of reasons such as:
> Designed for displays
> Geometric
> Friendly and open curves
> Free license
Typography
Prototype
The home page is used to give the user a summary of upcoming activities and their activity data at glance. Cards are dynamically curated depending on the stage of pregnancy.
Home
All the mental and physical tools in one tab.
Wellbeing
Articles
Users can access relevant information from reliable sources in the articles tab. The information is categorized to ease navigation. A bite-sized summary of some articles is provided.
Community
A community section would provide users with moral support and help them gain support from members of the group as well as provide the same attention to other members.
During the research phase, we found out that the main existing way that women make and present their birth plans is via a multipage government-issued form. Which was a pain to fill and was largely looked over by the busy medical staff.
Birth Plans
Usability Testing
So after defining the high-fidelity design we carried out a round of usability testing to evaluate the overall “user experience” to identify any issues and make improvements to the design. I tested on five primary users using a think-aloud protocol. we were able to collect quantitative and qualitative data by recording task times, using a system usability scale questionnaire followed by unstructured post-test interviews.
First Round
To test the initial design and usability of the app and to highlight key usability issues we conducted a round of testing with Five participants compeleting Seven predefined tasks. Participants were encouraged to Think Aloud; which we recorded with their consent. The time it took them to finish the tasks was also recorded, After they had completed all the tasks they filled out a SUS quetionare and answered Four questions regarding the test in a semi-structured interview.
Measuring the task times gave us an insight on usability each section of the app; allowing us to identify and improve the problematic areas.
Task Times
System Usability Testing
Measuring the SUS score gave us a benchmark on the overall usability of the product. While the results were acceptable, we recognised that there was room for improvement.
A short semi-structured interview allowed us to gather some qualitative feedback to help us identify the painpoints.
Interviews
Findings and Insights
Based on the qualitative and quantitative data points collected; we identify Five main areas to prioritise in iterations.
> Busy Home page
> Contraction Timer
> Share button
> Badges and Statistics
> Navigation contrast and Label
