Gestational Diabetes App
First of it's kind app for expecting mothers managing diabetes
I designed this app for my son's mother while she was pregnant so that she could easily track and manage her gestational diabetes and communicate results with her doctor digitally versus pen, paper, and office visits.
The Challenge
- To gain an understanding of what information is required by doctors for tracking and managing the disease.
- To gain an understanding of the needs of the women who manage gestational diabetes during their pregnancy.
- To identify and prioritize features with actionable product concepts that I could implement in the first version of the app.
My Role
My role was to conceptualize product vision, conduct design research, design for the component and flow concepts, and create UX strategy.
Brand Identity
Color
Logo Mark
Final Logo
App Discovery
Physician Research
- Physician Immersion
I shadowed a physician for a day to gain a better understanding around how they monitor, communicate, and assess their patients in terms of health risk. - Individual interviews
I then sat with a few different physicians individually and asked them questions to better understand the various view points amongst the group at the hospital. - Analyzing data metrics
I asked for a detailed report on the data surrounding indicators of at risk woman to create hypothesis on information architecture and feature prioritization.
User Research
- User immersion
Living with my son's mother made this easy. During her journey through contracting, managing, and monitoring her gestational diabetes I was there to observe and support. - Selecting the test group
To gain a larger perspective I selected users with different backgrounds from various areas around the states to make up my test pool. This was to find common pain points amongst the diversity of users to identify common areas of opportunity. - Individual interviews
I wanted to gain a better understanding on what was important to the user, what tasks they needed to fulfill, what is their current feeling about gestational diabetes, and what areas of the current experience is frustrating. - Analyzing data metrics
I gathered all of the qualitative data to understand and prioritize pain points and opportunities.
Overall Findings
Problems
These are the most common problems across users.
- User has to carry around a pen and paper to track gestational diabetes data
- User has to plan and travel to doctor appointments to hand over and review data
- Document used to track data by users are old xeroxed forms that are hard to read
- Users view doctor appointments as a chore or errand
- Users who are using medication are unfamiliar with how to do so
- Users who are using diet are not familiar with acceptable foods
Opportunities
These are found within the problems that were discovered.
- Allow users to input and store required data directly into the app
- Allow the app to review data and curate results based off of the user data input
- Make information clear and readable to users
- Allow user to submit data directly to their physician
- If user is using medication to manage gestational diabetes surface instructions on how to do so
- If user is using diet to manage gestational diabetes surface instructions on how to do so
Solutions
User Flow
Made in FigJam
Sketches
High Fidelity
Made in Figma
Data Input
It was top priority for the user to be able to input the required data for their physicians in the comfort of their own space. Women who are further along within their pregnancy found it more difficult to make doctor appointments.
When asking the user to input their data I had to make sure that the ask was clear and easy to understand to ensure the quality of data being inputed by the user. During testing user's said that at times paper documents from doctors where so xeroxed that it was hard to read to the point that they were not able to provide accurate data.
Data Feedback
During testing I found that instant calculated feedback using the user's data input allowed the user to make in the moment decisions based off of their blood sugar levels. This meant a change in medication or diet.
To make it even easier for the user I utilized simple and easy to read graphs to visualize their data output.
Physician Communication
Users being able to submit their data directly to their physicians means less doctors appointments and more time to dedicate towards preparing for their newborn.
Mobility becoming a factor in later trimesters means that less travel to physician offices increases quality of life for expecting mothers.
If a mother is at risk or has concerns the ability to schedule a video or office visit via the app increases convenience and security with the user.
Medication Solution
Women have a choice when presented with treatment for their gestational diabetes. They can either take insulin or manage their blood sugar with diet. For women who choose insulin they need to be informed on how and what type of insulin to take.
Making sure users are informed when making this decision and starting their journey with insulin injections help reduce anxiety and increases the success rate of users which is a metric that is based off of maintained blood sugar levels.
Diet Solution
Users who choose to manage their gestational diabetes through diet need to be informed as to which foods they can eat to help maintain their blood sugar levels. The data input that is required for these user's vary from the users who choose medication as their mode for management.
Reporting and physician communication is more important for these users as it is more difficult to manage blood sugar levels strictly by diet.
Success Metrics
First round of crowd funding
With a fully thought out design solution we can now move towards showcasing our app idea for the first round of crowd funding.
Working with medical professionals
Working negotiations with physicians who treat mothers with gestational diabetes to utilize the app.
Building the app
Providing the development team with functional Figma solutions to start build.
