TimeLine

Six Week (Sep 2022- Nov 2022)

My Role

Product designer, UX Researcher

My Team

Sangeetha P, Ching-Min Tseng, Medhavi Thakur

Problem to solve..

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) is a common hormonal disorder that affects women of reproductive age. It is characterized by a variety of symptoms such as irregular periods, heavy bleeding, acne, excessive hair growth, and difficulty getting pregnant.
PCOS affects approximately 6-18% of women of reproductive age worldwide. it is prevalent issue. Despite affecting a large number of women, many cases of PCOS go undiagnosed and untreated. The condition is often misunderstood and overlooked, leading to a lack of awareness and resources devoted to it.

Design Process

Go to Solution

Research

Analyse

Define

Design

Evaluate

Reflect

Research

Phase 1

Semi - structured interview

Based on our analysis of 8 interviews conducted with individuals between the ages of 20 and 35, we have identified several key insight‍

  • People are ignore the symptoms because lack of awareness
  • People wanted to be heard and accepted.
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  • Maintaining a healthy lifestyle was hard. people seek some mentorship or assistance to track their lifestyle

Secondary research

After thoroughly reviewing a significant number of research papers, we have distilled several key findings.
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  • Healthy diet and daily exercise is important to manage PCOS
  • People aren't aware of PCOS long term effects.
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  • Consulting expert at early stage can be life saver rather
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Phase 2

Competitive Analysis
What's out there in the market?
We looked up 10+ Applications and social media page.
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Clue:a period tracking app that also allows users to log symptoms related to PCOS.
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‍Flo:another period tracking app that includes information on PCOS and options for tracking related symptoms.
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My PCOS Team: a social networking app for individuals with PCOS to connect with others and share information and support.
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Ovia Fertility : an app that provides personalized fertility and period tracking, with a focus on helping women with PCOS conceive.

What are the takeaway points....
1. There is no "one stop solution" for PCOS.
2. Most of them do nothing but period tracking.

Analyze

Affinity Mapping
We used affinity mapping to analyze the data from our user research and interviews in order to identify patterns and themes related to user needs and wants. This helped us to better understand the pain points and areas of interest among our users, and to identify opportunities for our application to provide value in the PCOS market
Empathy mapping
We used empathy mapping to gain a deeper understanding of the emotional and psychological experiences of our users with PCOS. This helped us to identify their pain points, goals, and needs, and to design our application to address them in a more empathetic and user-centered way.
Empathy map generated for bette user understanding
Image: Created Empathy map for user understanding

Define Problem Statement

" Priya, a woman of reproductive age, is experiencing irregular periods and weight gain issues. She is struggling to cope with the societal pressure and wants a quick and easy solution to understand the underlying issue. She needs a platform that connects her with medical experts who can provide her with accurate and reliable information, guidance, and support to manage her condition and improve her quality of life."

Design

Storyboarding is the initial mind child we started to bring our ideas to the papers. Based on the the persona characters we created a few storyboards.

Storyboard 1:

Idea for creating awareness of PCOS

Storyboard 2:

Idea for Quick expert help fot PCOS patients.

Low-Fidelity prototyping

Parallel Designing
In our project, we employed a method called "Parallel Design" where we crafted 2-3 diverse versions of screens and flows within a low-fidelity prototype. This approach was aimed at optimizing user testing, enabling us to gather valuable insights and refine the design effectively.
Design Variation 1
Parallel design allows us to explore and implement multiple design variations simultaneously, enabling quicker identification of the most intuitive and least cognitively taxing design elements. This iterative process optimizes the user experience by reducing cognitive overload and enhancing usability. By leveraging parallel design, we streamline decision-making, enhance user satisfaction, and create interfaces that effortlessly guide users through their tasks.
Design Variation 2

HI-Fidelity prototyping

Create awareness
Why Awareness feature?
  • According to 52% of the women aren't aware of PCOS.
  • Experts say early detection of PCOS and managing can avoid fatal risks.
Why This Feature?
  • We saw some of our interviewees just want to be heard and accepted.
  • Some of our researches said people with PCOS wants to share their experiences
  • People feel comfortable to talk to those who has similar experience and issues. Solving the problem together is easier than solving alone

Quick Expert help

Significance of the feature...

  • Our research says people struggle to look for second opinion from an expert.
  • Expert appointments are expensive and people think for minor issues reaching out experts are unessary and hold back themselves.
  • Global network makes people to reachout to larger group and find better help.
Go to Design Process

Design Evaluation

Heuristic evaluation

Process:
After we completed our low-fidelity prototype. We conducted our initial heuristic evaluation with 4 UX experts. Several findings were obtained through our heuristic evaluation.
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Usability Test

Think aloud session were conducted and given 3 tasks to perform. we set success criteria. Users were asked question about what they see and what they think seeing the application.

Feedback we got

1.The result page, after the questionnaire, had a lot of cognitive load with respect to all the information that was put on one screen
2.Sending chat request was blocked by the sign-up process

The final prototype

Reflection

This was my first project in HCI course. This helped me to put my thoughts to build a product. Throughout the process I learnt a lot of design insights,
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a) Being empathetic is key to find solution:When we start talking to the women about their pcos issues, a few were tensed with their weight, some with infertility, a few were annoyed of excessive facial hair , some were frustrated with hair loss. Understanding the user and come up with a solution which can cater everyone was
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b) Balancing feasibility and innovation: It is important to strike a balance between feasibility and innovation when developing a product. This balance helps to ensure that the product is both functional and useful, while also pushing the boundaries and exploring new ideas and technologies.
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c) Know thy neighbors:While creating Womanaid, how can we differentiate ourselves from the competition? We conducted a competitive analysis to identify what has already been offered to users and what unique value we can bring to the table.
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