GlucoTect App | Mysite

GLUCOTECT

END TO END APP DESIGN

LEAD UX DESIGNER, RESEARCHER, UX/UI DESIGN, 80 HRS

PROJECT BRIEF

GlucoTect is a fictional blood glucose monitoring device with wearable technology that allows users to monitor blood sugar levels without needing to finger prick themselves. Wearables are sleek and small and can be worn on various parts of the body such as the upper arms or stomach. With over 1.5 million new cases of diabetes diagnosed in 2015 alone, the demand for wearable technology in diabetic management has never been higher. Continuous glucose monitoring is the core management plan for diabetics worldwide. GlucoTects biggest value to the market is in the devices ability to monitor effortlessly, and painlessly with real time data delivered through the device app. The main objectives for this project where focused on creating an app for the GlucoTect device with high level objectives of

Ensuring the app has capabilities to help diabetics monitor and manage their diabetes
Designing a logo for GlucoTect

RESEARCH

HIGHLIGHTS

To get a better understanding of the scope of the project I utilized my favorite tool on my UX belt, Research. You just cant argue with the facts!

I created a research plan to help guide and keep me on track. I decided to focus on doing secondary and primary research. My secondary research consisted of market research and competitive analysis. The primary research consisted of interviews with 4-6 participants and one subject matter expert interview. Here is what I focused on:

Discover pain/pleasure points related to diabetic sugar monitoring
Discover pain/pleasure points related to managing diabetes
What methods diabetics are using to control blood glucose levels (exercise, diet)(apps, devices)
What has been most/least helpful in diabetes management

Here are some highlights of what I learned in secondary reserach:

2 Direct market competitors
- Both offer wearable technology
- Both offer app components with other diabetic management criterion such as diet, & exercise.
- Both needed a separate handheld device to compute data
1.4 million new cases of diabetes each year
Blood Sugar monitoring is the primary method of management
Constant finger pricks cause pain and frustration when little blood comes out
Many struggle with remembering to check blood sugar levels

Here are some highlights from 1:1 interviews and subject matter expert interviews

According the subject matter expert, Diabetes involves a lifestyle change. Monitoring is only the first step in achieving control. Diet, water, and exercise all play pivotal roles in controlling blood sugar.
Most issues reported were with managing diabetes, not with devices themselves. Issues centered around remembering how much water to drink in day, foods to avoid, getting exercise in, and remembering to take medications.
All mentioned they could benefit from reminders and extra education in these categories.
A few mentioned charts to track progress and blood sugar readings over time would be helpful.

My key takeaways after conducting research, as hypothesized, would be to include features on the app in addition to blood glucose monitoring such as, exercise/step tracker, water intake reminder/tracker, diet tracker as well as suggestions, and medication reminder/tracker.

EMPATHIZE

To help me understand the user better I created Personas, & Empathy Map. I like to use these techniques to help communicate the view of the customer to the organization and humanize the data. It also helps to spot behavioral trends in data and dive deeper into the research.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE & INTERACTION DESIGN

Once I was able to solidify what was important to the customer and getting deeper insight into the lives of the customer I felt ready to move forward with the structure and flow of the product. Before putting the meat on the bones per-say, I needed to put the bones together and understand how the pages and transitions would work. To do this I first put together a task flow to see how a user would accomplish specific tasks on the page and completed a site map to understand the structure of the app.

From here knowing the basic structure of the app and the flow I began sketching the low-fidelity wireframes.

UI DESIGN AND TESTING

At this point I was ready to pull together ideas for the brand, logo, font styles, and brand colors. GlucoTect wanted to convey a brand image of

Clean, Clear and Fresh
Intelligent and Innovative
Reliable

To me this meant colors like blue, yellows, orange to convey feelings of reliability, freshness, and innovation. For the brand logo I decided to go with a bumblebee because of its symbolism with brightness, freeness, team work, and personal power. I liked the flexibility of the Roboto Font and how it felt upbeat yet sturdy.

Once I had the Style Tile down, I was ready to create the high fidelity mockup and prototype it for testing. I wanted to mainly test if the content in the app was useful and if it was easy to use. Although diabetes affects people of all ages, predominantly diabetic sufferers are older in age and I wanted to make sure the app was easy to navigate, useful, helpful, and needed. Here are what some of the screens look like.

To test the prototype you can go here.

In order to prepare for usability testing I prepared a test plan. My test objectives where to:

Observe how the user interacts with the app and how pleasant the app is to use
Test for ease of identifying different content in app
Test for efficiency and any errors that may present themselves while completing tasks in app
Discover any areas of improvement

I utilized Marvel to carryout the prototyping and usability testing. I was able to conduct testing with 3 participants between the ages of 29-55 one of which had Diabetes. After providing the script, the participants had 9 tasks to complete. Those centered around general tasks of navigating around the app. Overall feedback was positive and most tasks where completed without any errors or confusion. The error free rate was 88%. I then moved to affinity mapping to pull out areas of success/feedback/improvement.

The main feedback received from participants as far as pains/patterns was regarding the save icon not being noticeable. The recommendation was to increase the icon in size and visibility. Aside from that, reception was positive, all felt the app was helpful, useful, and easy to navigate. I made the necessary changes and hope to continue to iterate on this project to deliver a final and complete product.

FINAL PRODUCT