Elsa & Co
Elsa & Co is a femtech company on a mission to empower all women to understand and manage their health. It seeks to adopt a data-driven, social approach to restoring hormonal balance, specifically women with Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).
With clear business objectives, the goal of the project is to ideate and design a mobile app from square one. App capabilities include allowing women to track their symptoms, have access to the companies health services for PCOS, and view health insights.
Sprint Duration
3 weeks
12 Mar '21 to 5 Apr '21
My Role
In a group project
UX Researcher
UX Designer
UI Designer
Visual Designer
Tools Used
Figma
Trello
Google Spreadsheet
Responsibilities
User research & Synthesis
Affinity Mapping
Create Persona & Customer Journey Map
Sketching
Wireframes & Prototype
Usability Testing & Iterations
Create Style Guide
Understanding the User
User Interviews
Without pre-existing insights, research was conducted on 4 women with PCOS and 1 woman with endometriosis to uncover insights on their personal health journeys.
The research objectives are to:
-
Understand users' attitudes and expectations towards women's health
-
Explore the motivations behind taking charge of one's health
-
Understand expectations towards a women's health clinic
-
Look into a woman's personal health journey
-
Enquire into the need for a community
Key Findings:
Some of the insights gathered are:
-
Users struggle with keeping track & understanding their condition as people with PCOS tend to have varying symptoms.
-
Users struggle to find the ideal way to manage PCOS; most users prefer TCM and tend to avoid Western doctors.
-
Users recognise that lifestyle changes are important in helping them, but struggle to adopt good habits.
-
Users found that seeing tangible improvements help them to stay motivated in managing their PCOS symptoms.
User Persona - Desiree
With our research insights and findings, we crafted our persona and fleshed out the customer journey map, to communicate some of our research with stakeholders as well as establish a clear representation of who we are designing for.
Problem Statement
Desiree, a woman with PCOS, wants to manage her symptoms, but finds it a hassle to track them consistently and access actionable insights.
Design Process
Design Workshop #1
Feature Prioritisation
In a one-hour workshop with the client and a PhD-trained PCOS specialising dietitian, we aimed to:
-
Identify and prioritise the key app features necessary for the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and,
-
Delve into the app content specifics of the symptoms needed for the health tracking function.
Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Given the limited timeframe, it was essential that we identified the key app functions with the client so as to ensure that the deliverables handed over are satisfactory.
To do so, our group listed out all the necessary functions for the mobile app and categorised it into the following sections:
-
Start Here (High value, High impact)
-
Do Next (High value, Low impact)
-
Proceed carefully (Low value, High impact)
-
Avoid for now (Low value, Low impact)
-
Book consultation
-
Community board
-
Frequently Asked Questions page
-
Access articles
-
Progress bar
-
Personalised treatment plan
-
Shop
-
Health quizzes
-
Onboarding tutorial for users
-
Health trackers
-
Insights
-
Setting a health baseline
-
Test reports
-
Goal reminders & daily tips
-
Sync health devices
-
Change language
Feature prioritisation of the key functions to be tackled within the project's timeline.
Information Architecture & Design for Health Tracker
In order to manage their PCOS symptoms, it is important for users to be able to track a variety of their symptoms from their mood, diet, fitness, to their menstruation, menstrual symptoms, and Basal Body Temperature (BBT).
Hence, card sorting was conducted with the client and PCOS expert to categorise the numerous trackers so as to not overwhelm the user.
Daily Trackers
-
Sleep
-
Nutrition
-
Exercise
-
Mood
-
PCOS symptoms
-
Medicine & supplements
Monthly Trackers
-
Period cycle
-
Menstrual symptoms
-
Basal Body Temperature
-
Ovulation
-
Vaginal discharge
-
Sex drive
-
Pregnancy tests
Quarterly Trackers
-
Hormone blood test
-
Blood glucose test
Sketches & Ideation
Click to Enlarge
Organising the trackers on the app design
Based on the information architecture, the trackers were categorised into Daily, Monthly, and the Quarterly trackers were put into a Test function where users can log and view their health test results.
Customise trackers
People with PCOS are known to have varying symptoms and health issues. As such, this customisation allows them to minimise the cognitive load of looking at all of the trackers and also reduce the pressure of having to log all of the symptoms available.
Design Workshop #2
Feature Prioritisation cont.
In the following week, a second design workshop was conducted to address the scope of the Insights function and ideate solutions to address how users can track their nutrition and receive actionable insights.
Our group also took the brand's personality and current style guide to craft two different design directions to present to the client during the workshop.
Tackling Nutrition
Competitive analysis
In preparation for the second workshop, our group conducted competitor/comparative analysis on lifestyle apps like Lifesum, Tangerine, and Epsy. In doing so, we were able to better facilitate the workshop and generate more ideas.
Lifesum
Tangerine
Epsy
Nutrition Tracker
The assumption in designing the nutrition tracker is that users will be able to access a food database which allows them to search for food on the app. As such, we took reference from Lifesum to design the screens.
Nutritional Insights
Diet and nutrition may be a sensitive topic for some and as designers, we wanted to avoid potential triggers that make affect a person's self-esteem and perception to their health and body. Visual graphs and charts were used to showcase insights rather than numerical data and calorie count.
Design Style Guide
Elsa & Co's main brand attributes revolves around 4Cs - Compassion, Connected, Confidence and Community. With that in mind, the general principles of the style guide is to exude feminism and elegance so as to empower women to take charge of their health.
Click here for the full design style guide
Usability Testing & Iterations
Two rounds of usability testing were conducted with 5 testers each.
The scenario is that:
You are an existing customer of Elsa & Co and have just been diagnosed with PCOS via a blood test. You would like to use the Elsa & Co app to track your PCOS symptoms and kickstart your journey to improve your health.
With the tasks of:
-
Registering for an account and set your health goals
-
Submitting and view your test results
-
Tracking your daily health & mood, and add fish to your breakfast
-
Tracking your fertility health
-
Viewing insights
-
Viewing nutrition Insights
Usability Testing
System Usability Score (SUS)
The SUS survey is a reliable tool for measuring the usability. It consists of a 10 item questionnaire with five response options for respondents; from Strongly agree to Strongly disagree.
The general guidelines for the survey are:
-
Excellent: >80.3
-
Good: 68 - 80.3
-
Okay: 68
-
Poor: 51 - 68
-
Awful: <51
As there was an improvement in the SUS score from 62 to 80.5, it shows that the iterations made to the prototype has improved its usability.
Iterations & Findings
Iteration #1
One feedback that we had gotten from our client on the tracker is that they would like to reduce the number of steps for users to track their symptoms.
Hence, the tracking function was shifted to the bottom navigation bar to make it more accessible for users to start logging their symptoms.
Before
After
Iteration #2
One of the significant problems found during the 2nd task is that users struggled to make sense of the information shown to them. They did not understand what AMH, TSH, and FT4 were and didn't realise that they could tap on the banners to view more info.
To combat this, a CTA button to View Report is inserted onto the banner.
Before
After
#1 Balancing User Needs & Business Goals
This product is one that’s data-heavy as various questions had to be asked in order for the business to set a health baseline and offer actionable insights. Hence, there was a need to balance the number and type of questions asked in order to minimise user fatigue during the Onboarding quiz. Despite ideating various solutions, we believe that there is still a good potential for improvement here.
#2 Working in An Agile Environment
As business goals come to the forefront of this project, there was a need for us to streamline our UX approach to design this app. Hence, the team reached out to the client to arrange for weekly check-ins so as to update our clients on our progress and ensure that we do not stray from the original scope of the project.
#3 Empathy is Key
Having heard of PCOS for the first time upon the start of this project, it was an insightful and enlightening experience to learn more about the topic and empathise with our target audience. It allows us to dig deep into our understanding of the user and create solutions that will not only solve a need, but effectively improve our users’ lives by helping them to manage their hormone health.
If more time was given, I would...
-
Research and design app screens for Community, Learn & Shop
-
Understand users’ take on personalised goals & ‘universal’ standards for a health baseline
-
Design optional tutorial screens both for the app and with screenshots on the app store
-
Conduct further usability test on existing customers (Active tracking users)
-
Look into incorporating meal plans into the Elsa & Co health app
