A real world project with a team: Asel Botpaeva as Developer and initiator and Aijamal Djanybekova as Community Manager
End to end project
Pregnancy tracking
mobile app
My role
UX / UI Designer
Duration
1.5 month
Tools
Figma
About the app
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According to World Bank statistics, Kyrgyzstan has high rates of maternal mortality - 60 per 100k live births (2017).
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However, young women in rural areas are provided with limited or no level of health and sexual education. In addition, their native language - Kyrgyz is less digitalized, and thus, women who only speak Kyrgyz don’t have such information accessible online.
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The situation creates a vacuum of information available to the young mothers in rural areas who make the majority of the female population.
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We hope to solve the problem by creating a pregnancy tracking app in Kyrgyz language. The app will provide antenatal care which is a vital preventative measure for protecting the health of women and their unborn child.
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The app will break down the information into 38 weeks by explaining the stages of fetal growth and the physical changes in a mother's body. The essential part of the app is to provide medically verified recomendations on the healthy behavioral practices, excersices and budget-friendly nutrition intakes.
CHALLENGES
SOLUTION
Problem
Opportunity
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Design a new mobile app which provides informative guidance for pregnant women to monitor their pregnancy stages.
Turning problem into an opportunity
The challenge is to turn the problem into an opportunity to improve the situation. In doing so, we took these steps:
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Helping women to protect their health and their unborn child by providing pregnancy tracking app with the following features:
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The content with easily digestable info-briefs on the fetal growth and the physical changes in the mother's body and provide expert recomendations;
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Users should be able to save and share the information with their support system;
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The content must be available in Kyrgyz;
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Researching to understand the human side of the problem
Connecting with empathy
Testing and validating the ideas
Research
- Who are the real users?
- What is the human side of the problem?
Interview
Research goal:
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To understand the key challenges women are facing during pregnancy and what vital elements are they lacking for a healthy and balanced experience;
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To understand how can we help the women and their families to be better prepared and to make the process easier.
Users
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We interviewed 5 women (25-40) who are or have been pregnant before;
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We visited the women in rural area hospitals;
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All users speak Kyrgyz;
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All users have no or limitted knowledge on pregnancy tracking apps.
User interview affinity map:
How did it help?
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Engaging with the real potential users and visiting their location helped us to understand the context better and gain more empathy;
Summary:
Interview findings
Synthesizing
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By synthesizing interview findings we were able to group problems into related topics and see the bigger picture;
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Women were most concerned about the physical changes and not always knowing what to do to help themselves;
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Also not always getting sufficient level of support and understanding by family members concerned them;
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Poor quality of medical care was a bigger problem, which must be tackled at the national level.
Mood swings
Physical changes
- Toxicosis
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Food craving
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Hemoglobin decrease
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Varicose veins
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Fear of miscarriage
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Pain in stomach
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Back pain
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Sleepiness and fatigue
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Leg swells
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Heightened sense of smell
- Some women experience frustrations and even anger during pregnancy due to hormonal changes;
- Feeling a need for attention;
Medical access
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Unsufficient number of specialists (gynecologists, maternity nurses) in rural hospitals;
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Difficulty of access if a patient is not registered at the local medical facility;
- Some patients reside far from the public hospitals;
- Unprofessional behavior of medical staff put extra psychological pressure;
- Corruption in medical facilities;
- Low quality of laboratory tests and mistrust towards the public hospitals as a result;
- Long waiting lines at the laboratories;
- High cost of medical service at private medical services;
Lack of support
- In some cases, family members do not have sufficient understanding about the physical and psychological changes, which cause additional stress in relationships;
Key takeaways
We identified the lack of information - women being unprepared for pregnancy, as one of the key factors creating or adding to the challenges. The other reasons are low quality of medical care and low level of trust due to that. While we cannot improve the quality of healthcare in Kyrgyzstan in the short-run, we focused on providing verified expert information for women to understand the changes and to know what to do to help themselves.
CHALLENGES
So the app should focus on education by providing access to:
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explaining and visually showing how baby is growing throughout 38 pregnancy weeks;
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explaining the physical and psychological changes the mother is experiencing;
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providing expert recomendations for each week on: nutritional intake, medical screening, useful excersizes;
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enabling users to save and share the information with their support system;
SOLUTION
What challenges are pregnant women facing?
Overcoming the challenges
What is their source of information?
What is already available in the market?
DEVELOPING EMPATHY
Defining the users we asked:
- Who will use the app?
We summarized the user challenges and behaviors in one persona. We also gave visual identity and name in order to refer to the user and make the design decision oriented towards a human.
Connecting with empathy:
- How might they be feeling about their situation?
- How can we understand and share the same feelings?
Ideation
Sketching the idea
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Another important element was to help users to find out their due date, if they dont know yet. It was essential for keeping a weekly track;
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I sketched out the steps necessary in calculating pregnancy due date;
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From there I mapped out the next logical steps in a transparent way;
1) getting to know
2) calculating due date
3) learning
4) taking action
Task flow:
The primary steps a user takes to accomplish a goal
Guiding the user experience
Once the key areas of functionality were identified, I created a task flow to determine the key screens and the flow between them;
Design
Wireframes:
Lessons learned:
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This project took the longest in wireframing stage, because I jumped right into hi-fi without validating the flow at the earlier stages;
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As a result, I ended up creating multiple versions and investing time into visual side more than the logic of usability.
Next time:
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I would test as much as possible, to ensure that the time invested into the detailed UI is worth and timely;
Usability testing
Testing three versions
I tested three versions of design. The first version is what the stakeholder wanted to see. The second version is slightly changed with the imagery and navigation bar. The third one is based on such principles simple, open and transparent content.
Test findings
Observing how users were navigating through all the versions, it was clear that the Version 2 and 3 were the easiest to interact with. The navigation simplicity of V-2 and open information in V-3 was what the users enjoyed the most. The final design integrated the useful parts from the both.
Task
Go to week-10 and learn more about the baby growth and the body changes in mother.
VERSION 1:
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5 out of 6 did not complete.
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Reason: it was not clear that the vertical side bar opens. Users thought it was a scroll sign.
VERSION 2:
VERSION 3:
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All 6 users completed the task.
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Reason: easier navigation and imagery.
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The Nav bar images were emotionally appealing and positive.
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All 6 participants completed.
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Users found it was more open and transparent.
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All scrolled down vertically and found the cards about baby and mother.
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Only on this version users were able to understand that the fruits represent baby size and the weight, height were more visible
Final design
Testing and validating in conflicting situations
Learning the human side of the story
Ensuring that the product is useful
Final thoughts
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This project taught me the importance of testing ideas. I created three versions - one based on the stakeholder wishes, the second was similar but with UI difference and the third was more detailed but verticaly longer.
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Testing made it easy to understand how to move forward. Observing the users' behaviors, their struggles and joy, I draw lessons as to how to make the design easier and useful to inteact with.
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Interacting with the real users during their pregnancy and understanding their environment was vital for creating empathy on the human level.
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I also learned by being open and interviewing at the comfortbale space for the users;
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The app should not become just a one-time delivery. It should be further iterated based on usability tests and in-depth surveys with the user to improve the launching version.
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In regards to the content, the next step is to work with the field experts - gynecologists, nutritionists and pregnancy coachers to develop and validate the content.
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The validated and GLOCALIZED information would be the real use of the app in educating women and their partners for ensuring a healthy and balanced pregnancy experience.
