For this project I worked with my team Happy Hub at the UCSD Design Lab's Center 4 Health where we served as Design Consultants. We applied this community's principles into our own health related app that could be used to target the need for resources and clear information during crises and everyday scenarios.
Team:Doan D., Daniela A., Athena H., and Jessie L.
Tools: Figma, FigJam, and Miro
Scope: UI/UX Design, User Research, User Testing, Interviews, and Pitch Presentation
Timeline: April - June 2023
My Role: I worked as co-lead UX/Ul Designer and User Researcher for the development of the app. I helped conduct user research and also design the app interface.
We interviewed people and found out that people often have trouble knowing what to do in emergencies and even everyday unforeseen situations. We decided to create an app that would allow us to provide people with timely, clear and reliable information to overcome times when they are in lack of accessible resources and information.
To start understanding the big picture and the problem, I examined products with similar goals in mind like : Citizen, Waze, and Apple's Emergency Alerts.
We learned that while these apps are similar in the goals we wished to address there were a few things they weren't doing. Most of these apps lacked clear digestibility and most importantly it doesn’t provide users with clear tips or suggested next steps.
To understand the bigger picture we needed to gain a deeper understanding of how people navigate through tough times using the outbreak of COVID-19 as a reference point. The interviewees included a diverse range of individuals from high school students to university faculty/staff and this was done through convenience sampling. Through these interviews, I observed reoccurring answers and took note of common pain points and using this information we created a persona.
👥 55% of interviewees stated that they use a social media platform and notifications to stay up to date on recent events
👩🏽⚖️ 85% of interviewees use government trusted sites to get reliable and trustworthy news information
🥬⛑️ 74% of interviewees exclaimed that they've experienced struggling to get access to everyday resources like food
Using what we learned we decided that the key elements we wanted to include in our design would improve community resilience by connecting people with local resources and providing timely emergency alerts. More specifically, this can be split into 4 categories: public (community) health, notifications, personal health, and everyday needs.
Our team organized our app idea into an information architecture model in order to visualize how the app would move smoothly for the user. Along the way we kept the limitations into consideration while making sure we met our design goals which were: create a easy and seamless user interface experience, avoid lengthy text , and include a community map to show available resources in their area.
We got together to draft out sketches for the following screens: notification pop-up + follow-up detail screen, onboarding, home screen, profile set-up would look like.
We used the lo-fi sketches we made and created wireframes on Figma to begin our first round of usability testing on 8 users. To test them we created 5 user scenarios with follow up questions on their experience.
Another thing we wanted to keep in mind while testing was if the user could do the following:
Could users identify what the app was about?
Could users identify what the different icons on the map mean?
Could users easily navigate through the app & understand the information provided for emergencies?
We interviewed 5 new users and their thoughts solidified our need for our previous changes. 4/5 users felt that the app was easily understood and straightforward with minimal need for help.
However, we still received feedback that there were still some minor changes that we needed to adjust (eg font size, placement).
I want to give a special thanks to my team Happy Hub and my wonderful mentor Dr. Eliah Spencer for being truly the best professor and friend who gave insightful and meaningful advice along the journey. I learned so much from this experience and I was grateful to have so many inspiring designers working alongside me.
