The Project.
As part of the UX Immersion course at Career Foundry, I was tasked to design a health application that fulfilled certain functionality, such as an education and training feature and a means to store medical information. It was important for me to personalise the brief, and I decided to target mainly pregnant women and design an app that would support them on their journey through motherhood.
The Challenge.
There is a plethora of pregnancy resources available, such as blogs and forums as well as well-known resources like What To Expect. My personal observation from a few close friends however was their struggle in finding other pregnant women near them to connect with. I knew that the social aspect and wanting to feel less alone on their pregnancy journey was a need that was underserved. For this reason, I decided to make this the core feature of the Buba application.
My goal was to not only fulfil the feature requirements of the project, but ultimately design a service that spoke to all types of mothers, as well as make them feel supported by enabling them to connect with their personal women's circle. Inclusivity and social connection were therefore two key priorities in the development of the Buba application. In order to achieve this, I made sure to integrate a broad audience (single mothers, same sex marriages etc) in my interview and usability testing process so that their needs were heard and fulfilled.
Tools Used.
Google Forms
Adobe XD
InVision
Usability.gov: card sorting & preference testing
Research & Analysis
Understanding the Problem.
Problem Statement.
Buba users want to be able to connect and meet up with other pregnant women so that they feel less alone on their motherhood journey. They also want to be able to digitally store personal information such as medical records, appointments, and an image collection of their journey.
Hypothesis.
Users will feel supported with the Buba application if they can meet and feel supported by women who are going through the same experience as them. We will know this to be true when the number of women circle users and messages sent increases.
Solution.
A practical on-the-go application that empowers women to create their own women's circle and digitally store important information about their motherhood journey and share personal tips and experiences with women going through the same life stage as them.
User research was a vital part of the design process, especially the various interviews I conducted. Although I am a woman, I do not yet have children. Therefore, speaking to and learning about first-hand personal experiences and expectations from the target market was invaluable. This discovery phase allowed me to get a better understanding of the problem. I was able to observe attitudes and behaviours towards pregnancy in general, but also take note of what their personal experiences with available resources was.
I interviewed 5 target users of different backgrounds and conducted a survey with 20 respondents. The diversity of the participants was essential in making sure the application would be inclusive to different types of mothers.
Affinity Mapping
"The literature available online is not inclusive. Gendered language like "the father" when referring to the non-birthing parent should be avoided"
Hannah Griffiths
Concept & Design.
Three Distinct Target Audiences
Personas
I gathered the insights from the interview and survey to create three distinct user personas to represent the different needs of the Buba target audience.
Each persona has different needs. Their motivations and frustrations and goals were outlined.
YOKO
The Alternative Mom looking for a mind, body and soul spiritual connection for her pregnancy
ISABEL
The non-binary parent who wants to not be referred to as the father when she is gender neutral and simply a parent
JAMIE
The single mom juggling her career and child and trying to find enough hours in the day for everything.
User Journey Mapping and User Flows
In order to better understand different potential customers, I created user journey maps and user flows for each persona. The goal was to dig deeper into the types of journeys they would take to fulfil a certain goal.
In the below example with Yoko, the spiritual mom wants to connect with other pregnant moms to find a good Doula and midwife recommendation in London. We will know that she has successfully completed her task when she sends a message to a few moms from the community and schedules a meeting. A geolocation functionality is vital to complete this task.
Prototype & Usability Testing.
User Testing
Once I completed the mid-fidelity wireframes, I used InVision to create a clickable interactive prototype that I could use for usability testing.
Goal: My goal for the first round of usability testing was to evaluate the functionality of Buba. Since the designs were in grayscale, I made sure to inform the participants that this was the focus and not on the visual design. I wanted to see whether the users understood the core purpose and mission of the app, as well as how easily they navigated through the app's core functions.
Methodology: I conducted remote and in-person, moderated usability tests with 6 participants. The remote tests were conducted via Google Hangouts and the participants' screens recorded. So as to ensure consistency, my introduction and questions remained the same for each participant. Each participant had to complete 4 tasks and I included a general open-ended question feedback section to gain more insights and qualitative data.
Usability Test Rainbow Spreadsheet
Results & Insights
In general, all the participants were able to complete the tasks relatively easily. They found the connecting with other moms feature to be incredibly useful and one participant said that it was exactly what she was looking for while pregnant.
There were definitely some adjustments to make in terms of icons that weren't clear as well as reducing the business of some screens. Participants struggled with where to message another user and the task flow needed to be redesigned. All participants struggled with the first task to complete the onboarding. The design wasn't intuitive and were unsure of where to click. Another general comment was that the journal or "baby book" feature was really cool and should be made more prominent.
All in all, the usefulness of Buba was overwhelmingly positive and a lot of practical feedback points were generated during the usability test.
Iteration is a fundamental part of UX design, because it
allows for designers to adapt their ideas and test their designs.
The iterations of the login screens and Buba community
screens are outlined below.
Final Designs & Prototype
Conclusion
If this were a real project for a new startup company for example, I would feel confident in releasing V.1 of the app. The main area that needs further development is the initial questionnaire and how that would display personalised data according to the user's preferences. An example would be whether the user is the mother or partner and what life stage they are at.
What I learned the most from this project was how valuable ongoing iteration is and how important user feedback is. Of course, everyone has an opinion and as a UX designer, it is important to not blindly integrate all feedback. Nonetheless, having multiple pairs of eyes on the designs is so important. Using all of the tools was also immensely rewarding to know that there are all-encompassing tools to support from the wireframing to the prototyping to the usability testing stages.
