google aria

Case Study of End to End Application

Google has been recently investing more and more in the Healthcare space. They are improving Google search with specific healthcare cards and quick information for the user, as well as working harder on research and cloud initiatives. Google Aria is a combination of a wearable patch and mobile app that helps people monitor and manage their asthma. Google has been investing more and more in healthcare recently and they have contacted me to help them with this brand new application.

The Challenge

The goal is to first develop for Android, adhering to Material Design and Google’s guidelines.

Research

My goal was to uncover the demographics of asthma carrier, explore and review current competitors in the market and analyze their strengths and weaknesses and finally understand the variety of experiences of the asthma patients when dealing with asthma. The research methodologies that I used in this process are:

• Secondary Research - Statistics, facts to evaluate the direction of asthma apps

  • Market Research: to obtain statistics and facts of asthma patients

  • Competitive Analysis: to help understand the current market, what has been successful and what has not been

• Primary Research - Research that was done to carried out to answer specific questions

  • User Interview: to gain insight on real life experiences to better meet their needs

Secondary research was done to help us get certain statistics, facts to evaluate the direction of asthma apps. Some of the interesting information that was uncovered through secondary research are:

• About 1 in 12 people (about 25 million) have asthma, and the numbers are increasing every year

• Each day, ten Americans die from asthma, and in 2015, 3,615 people died from asthma. Many of these deaths are avoidable with proper treatment and care

• In the United States, people living in the Northeast and Midwest are most likely to have asthma, compared with people in the South and West. The prevalence of asthma is the same in metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas

• About half of people with asthma have an asthma attack

• In 2016, approximately 8.3% of children in the United States had asthma. Boys were slightly more likely to have asthma than girls at a rate of 9.2% and 7.4%, respectively

• Asthma is the third-ranking cause of hospitalization among children younger than 15

• Asthma is the leading chronic disease in children

• Boys are more likely to have asthma than girls. But women are more likely to have asthma than men

• Women are more likely to die from asthma than men and boys are more likely than girls

Source: CDC, Asthma Statistics, Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, Asthma MD, American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology

Today around 300 million people are suffering from asthma. In only 8 years this number is expected to rise to 400-450 million, increasing almost a 50%. However, less than 1% of the addressable target group is currently actively using asthma apps.

• There are multiple reasons why none of the almost 1,500 solutions didn’t manage to attract a substantial user number:

• No updates: 42% of the asthma apps belong to the long tail with zero downloads and updates in 2017

• Little added value: Most of the asthma mobile solutions are pure trackers apps, not offering any additional value like environmental sensing or forecast alerts

• No behavior change support: Behavior change supporting features are especially helpful for COPD patients to self-manage their physical activity, starting with, for example, an exercise advice to help change patient’s attitude and behavior or follow up on their work /results in other apps

• Little coaching / AI support: Coaching delivered either via personal coaches or artificial intelligence is also a proven method to increase users’ retention and apps acceptance, but has not been implemented in today’s asthma solutions

• Little automated data input: Automated data input via connected devices is also only available for a small share of solutions

• Seldom HCP support: Research HCP portals and license models are also hardly offered, excluding health insurance companies (HIC’s) and HCPs as distribution partners

Source:https://research2guidance.com/why-do-asthma-apps-only-capture-less-than-1-of-the-addressable-market-top-10-asthma-apps/

Then I began our competitive analysis. This method will helps me understand the current market, what the competitors have tried, what have worked and what has not worked. Overall many of these apps do not provide educational information about asthma but perhaps assumes that if a user is using it, then they must have knowledge of the medical condition. Majority of the apps requested for personalized information to better suit the user. All of the apps required logging in and signing onto view the full app.

After the secondary research came the primary research where I went out to get stories from real life experiences. The participants were loan officers ranging from 25-40 in age and the interview itself was conducted remotely. Some of the findings that were uncovered was:

• All of the participants have had an episode of asthma in the previous years

• All of the participants were diagnosed at a fairly young age

• All of the participants had frustration with limited ability in regards to physical exercise 

Synthesis

After gathering all the information through the research process came the synthesis. This process began with empathy mapping: based on the data collected from the user interview, it was written into 4 categories: See & Hear, Think & Feel, Saying, and Doing. Doing this helped to gain deeper insight to understanding their experience.

Another form of synthesizing the research was by developing a persona. Crystal Tearne represented the general audience of the asthma carriers who were in their early twenties, who also had a son who was suffering from asthma.

Define

Then I moved into defining the problem by entering into asking the Point of View and How Might We questions. The formula that was used for the Point of View statement was Needs + Insight. From there I asked the question “How might we…” for the next step which was brainstorming the possible solution. The key here was to not to ask too broad or too narrow because if it was too broad then there would be too many solutions, and if it was too narrow then not enough solutions.

Given HWM questions, began the brainstorming sessions. I began by writing the HWM questions on the blue sticky notes timed myself to spend 2 minutes on each question writing down all the possible solutions. I went through it 3 times then came with possible solutions .

STRATEGY

Project goals were used to identify commonality of Business Goal and User Goal. In the midst of the research process, often we need a reminder of what the business goals and user goals were to stay focused on the product that we are trying to build.

With the project goals in mind, I created a product roadmap, to display features in priority order. The roadmap includes metrics that will measure so that the impact and effectiveness of the features can be analyzed.

With the given product roadmap I was able to develop the appmap that would allow us to view the relation of each pages and general overview of the website.

interaction Design

One of the challenges that I faced was trying to target exactly what the task the user will attempt to accomplish. Based on users’ needs what they should attempt to do is to find useful information on this app which is the reason for this user flow.

The task for each users were:

• User A: First time user that wants start using the app to track his/her asthma. User’s wants to set up a profile

• User B: Returning user wants to check out a preventative care from an expert and share it with a friend.

Then the process began with brainstorming and sketching low-fidelity wireframes to be built out for mid and hi-fidelity wireframes in the future. It helped with the information architecture to help the user how to best find information and complete tasks.

Then these sketches were made into mid-fidelity responsive wireframes because this website would not only be presented on a desktop but also possibly a mobile and a tablet.

Then the mid-fidelity desktop wireframes were made into a prototype for usability testing. View prototype here.

USABILITY TESTING

The prototype was taken out for usability testing but before that I created a plan to what I wanted this usability testing was to be about. The objectives of the usability testing was to:

• Test the intuitiveness of the app regarding navigation and flow

• Observe what features the user may lean towards

• Test to find out any confusion/frustration that the user may encounter

The participant was given two scenarios: one in the perspective of an existing user and one in the perspective of a new user. They were given two tasks to accomplish:

1. Set up an account, sync a device, and check the dashboard

2. Find an article to share and share via email

With the collected data I organized the information by using affinity map. It was divided into three categories: success, patterns, comments. From there I uncovered insights and recommendations on how this website could be modified to better serve the needs of the asthma carriers.

Insights

1. The general consensus came from lack of tracking system like how to keep track, take history of the information entered into the app

2. Overall the participants wanted clarity on alert screen on how to add alert and not to make it look like a to-do list 

3. There were concerns on how to use the dashboard screen such as today’s condition and the reasons for the items featured on this screen

Recommendations

1. Adding history icon to display the information that’s been tracked for a period of time 

2. Take out checkmarks for alert page and make it look more like a calendar reminder and add alert to floating action button

3. Add short descriptions for each components for dashboard section

ui design & iteration

I began with these five brand attributes: Fresh, Friendly, Innovative, Reliable, Stimulating. Then a Pinterest moodboard was created to gather assets to express the look and feel for respective brand attributes.

Then I put together a style tile to gather different elements to represent Mortgage Coach. This style tile included the brand’s logo, color, typography and etc. One of the new things that was developed was the monogram which Mortgage Coach did not originally had.

Lastly I created the hi-fidelity wireframes. With the recommendations given earlier from the affinity map, the hi-fidelity wireframes were brought into life with a prototyping tool.

Lastly, I created a UI Kit to serve as a reference and resource guide for anyone working on the site. This guide will ensure the consistency of styles and elements used across the website. View prototype here.

Next Steps

• Designing a mobile app from end-to-end was quite challenging not only because of building something from scratch but also learning a lot about material design and adhering to those standards. Nonetheless it was an opportunity to get familiar with material design for the prospect of what’s to come.

• The next steps would be to do a second round of usability testing to further test the updated version of the prototype based on the recommendations from the round one. Then it would be modified once again for improvement.