Diabetes Capstone
Problem: Diabetics need to keep track of their glucose levels so they can manage their health and share information with their doctor. There are many tools to do this, including meter, digital applications, and paper tools. The paper tools and meters can be cumbersome since you have to remember to carry those around and they don't lay out information in the best way possible.
My Role: As a student of Springboard's UX Design Career Track, I acted as UX researcher, UX designer, and UI designer while executing this project as my capstone.
Approach and Strategy: I started with primary and secondary research, including competitive research an interviews with potential users. Then, after some ideating, I started designing, first with hand drawn sketches, which I used to make a prototype that I used for guerrilla usability testing. Then I made wireframes and finally, high fidelity screens. With the high fidelity screens I made a prototype which I used for two rounds of remote moderated usability testing.
The first step was to do secondary research. After learning some information about diabetes, I did a heuristic analysis of competitors. I compared three existing competitors: Dario, Glucosebuddy, and mySugr using thee of the ten usability heuristics from the Nielson Norman Group: match between system and the real world, aesthetic and minimalist design, and user control and freedom.
The next step was to do some primary research. To do this I conducted interviews with diabetics who keep track of their blood sugars and use their smartphone for activities other than just texting and calling. From these interviews I was able to get two different personas, one that prefers paper tools to record blood sugars and doesn’t like to record things like food and exercise, and one that prefers digital tools and does like to record things like exercise and food.
Ideation and Sketches
After research, it was time to start ideating. I knew I wanted to include in my app a logbook to track key health information, i.e., glucose level, food, mood, exercise, insulin, and medication, that users would input and be able to edit and delete after submitting them. I knew I wanted to show some numbers, graphs, or charts, that would show how this information changed over time. Lastly, I wanted to include a way to share this information with a doctor. I showed this in my sketches.
With the sketches, I created a prototype in the Marvel app and did guerilla testing with five people at a local mall. From there I observed that when people were asked to create an account, they selected sign in instead of sign up, and one participant said that the icon for share looked too similar to the icon for home, so when I did my wireframes I made the first page had two buttons, login and sign up, and I redesigned the share icon. I also changed the homepage from having just a simple list of entries to having it being organized by a calendar, since having everything in a long list seemed overwhelming.
Mood Board and Style Guide
Having diabetes can be stressful so I chose a relaxing color palette. I also chose contrasting colors so different elements can be emphasized. I was also inspired by the interfaces I found when doing my moodboard and the type in those interfaces looked like Helvetica, so I decided to use it in my own designs.
High Fidelity Screens
When designing the home page, I moved away from showing all the individual dates and just showed the months, since the dates wouldn’t be selectable until you selected a month. After learning about iOS guidelines, I moved away from showing an image reminiscent of a paper calendar when designing the share page and instead used a click wheel.
After doing a round of usability testing I found that when people were asked to record their blood sugar, they went to today’s date instead of selecting the plus sign, so I added labels to the icons on the bottom bar. One user had trouble fixing a record, so on the daily record page I added text that read “Click and entry to edit”. One user said that the home icon looked like an up arrow, so I gave the house a door.
Conclusion and Takeaways
The responses I got during my usability tests told me that my product was easy to use and would be valuable to diabetics who don’t use censors. Not everyone wants to record everything like food and exercise, which is why in my product that’s not mandatory, so each user can use it as they see fit. If I didn’t have time constraints I would have changed the text on the home page to read “Changes in Averages from Last Month” since some people were confused about what the “Changes from Last Month” meant. I would also design the features to add food, exercise, insulin, and medication. Lastly, after a user sends an email of their data, I would add a graphic reading “Email sent” since some users were unsure if they did it right after sending the email. Regardless, I believe I created a useful, easy to use product that solves a real world problem.