Glucose monitoring that sticks
Team
Sole Designer
Tools
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe XD
Adobe After Effects (animations)
InVision
Role
User research
Usability testing
UX copywriting
Low fidelity wireframes
Visual design
Context
According to the Centers for Disease and Control Prevention, “More than 30 million Americans have diabetes and 90% to 95% of them have type 2 diabetes.” Type 2 diabetes is known to be manageable. However, lifestyle changes and management can be difficult because the need of constant motivation, lack of ease and organization with glucose tracking.
Challenge
How might we prevent hypoglycemia in Type 2 Diabetes users?
How might we prevent pre-diabetic users from developing Type 2 Diabetes?
Solution
Create an app in 4 weeks that simplifies logging glucose levels as well food intake and activity.
Onboarding completion - provides users with a wiggle animation for feedback.
Animated icon in dialog box.
Research
Busy lives, lack of motivation and knowledge of low or high glycemic index foods keep participants from managing their diabetes or pre-diabetes.
Participants: Two Type 2 diabetes participants and three who are pre-diabetic.
Diabetic participants shared they have some understanding of the importance of diet but since they are busy at work, it’s hard to keep up with what is ok to eat. Glucose tracking is also another difficult task to manage. For those that are pre-diabetic ( 1 is no longer) motivation to change their lifestyle dwindles. The former pre-diabetic participant stated that she used the app MyFitnessPal to lead a healthier life after being told 4 times by her doctor that she was pre-diabetic.
View my research plan and process in the slide deck.
Competitive analysis shows what’s on the market is either visually appealing with heavy mental load or easy to use with a pushy marketing strategy.
Competitive Analysis of Glucose Buddy
Competitive Analysis of MyFitnessPal
Competitive Analysis of mySugr
Personas
3 personas were developed from synthesizing the interview insights and looking at the competitive landscape. GlyTrk's principal persona Raul has type 2 diabetes and keeping track of his glucose levels is super important . If he doesn't, he experiences hypoglycemic episodes which debilitate him at work.
Tina and Karina are secondary personas that on diet management.
Ideation
Glucose tracking and accessibility to low glycemic recipes arises from the app concept generating
I mapped out who would be the emotions and context for GlyTrk and as well in a concept generation worksheet. This helped me start visualizing a low-fidelity wireframe flow for onboarding.
Low-Fidelity wireframe flow
App concept idea generation
Initial Screen Sketches
Click to see a closer look at the user flow
Checking glucose levels becomes focal when mapping out user flow.
When putting together the first user flow I wanted to really understand how to make logging for Raul easy. I thought to keep the app at four menu options "Log", "Food", "Activity" and "Insights". Additionally, the user flow allowed me to start thinking of what type of interaction would occur when Raul logs his glucose reading. Taking a picture of his meter readings as opposed to manually input may be faster for him.
Wireframe flow focuses on short login and onboarding process for users.
The focus on the onboarding process stems from my target audience who are pre-diabetic. In order to provide the best suggested recipes on the Glycemic Index a series of questions would be asked such weight and height, what unit do they track their glucose levels and if they are pre-diabetic or have type 2 diabetes.
Usability Test
Glucose logging is not perceived as easy. Content tone is confusing to users.
This first round of user testing in the low fidelity prototype I quickly found that a bottom navigation is preferred versus card menu layout. Finding where to log glucose levels was not difficult. However, users stated they were lost and didn't know what to do after they logged their glucose levels.
Low-Fidelity Wireframes and Feedback
Refined Wireframes
High Fidelity Prototype
Visual Design
Having researched health and diabetes management apps in the competitive analysis and considering the target audience, heavy stroke icons and vibrant colors were implemented.
Overall goals for the visual design was to feel inviting but also so playful. The tone of the content wasn't to sound medical or formal so that users would not feel intimidated in using GlyTrk.
High Fidelity Prototype
With the visual design system in place and the user testing findings in the first round I created screens for logging glucose through a camera capture, as well for finding a recipe for lunch and receiving notifications.
Logging Glucose Levels with camera capture
Finding recipe for lunch
Getting Notifications
High Fidelity Prototype User Testing
A second round of usability testing shows that a majority of participants found logging glucose levels through camera capture and finding a recipe is easy. Notifications may provide very little value to users as only 1 participant said they would use it.
Reflection
Feature Creep
Advocating and hoping to ameliorate all my user interviewee's gripes led me to a slippery slope of generating too many features. I had to constantly think back to only one persona versus all 3. Therefore, the persona Raul helped me focus on making a feature strong for diabetics.
Further development
I would like to refine the high fidelity prototype with the user testing feedback received. I would also like to explore the gamification and the interactions with the data visualization. This way I can give users the motivation to manage their health.