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Good Shit
Executive Summary
Recap of project
Tools: FigJam, Figma, Canva, & Discord
Role: Designer and Researcher
Duration: October-December 2022
Team Members: Janice Kim, Jordan Scavo, & Jessie Wu
Approach
The approach our team used was Lean UX, which essentially allowed us to be continuous and collaborative. Lean UX adopts lean and agile development methodologies, reducing waste and being able to create products that are focused on the users.
Through this approach, Team K created an agile and creative platform to address important health needs.
Challenges we faced
- Creating and integrating an informational gut health tracker
- Design an educational yet informational platform where users can learn and understand their bowel movements
- Incorporating medication and doctor consultations for users to become more knowledgeable of their digestion system
Introduction
Questions and concerns rise when we take a look at the toilet after the disaster has finished. Some are left satisfied and continue with their day, while others worry about the color, shape, and even smell of the feces. Therefore, Good Shit is a tracking app that will log every number two the user experiences. The app is essentially focused in the gut health, where several digestion problems start. The app initially did not have a name or logo, so I began to brainstorm some names and possible logo designs. Once I introduced the word-mark logo of the idea Good Shit, the team approved of it and made it official. Team K focused to deliver an app that helps users become more informed, happy, and healthy about their Good Shit.
Good Shit is a gut health tracker that focuses on informing users about their digestion health and bowel movements. Through Lean UX, our team was able to construct a gut health tracker that identifies, satisfies the users’ goals, along by acknowledging the importance of the business needs.
For my interaction design two course, each student had the opportunity to pitch an idea that they would like to create using the Lean UX approach. Janice Kim pitched the idea of creating a gut health app that informed users to be more conscious and aware of their digestion health and bowel movements. I decided to pursue her vision because of how unique and fun the idea was presented to be. The team was consisted of Janice Kim, Jessie Wu, and Jordan Scavo. Through constant communication, Team K was focused on creating an user-interface application where users acknowledge the importance of gut health.
What is Lean UX?
This project was done through Lean UX, which is once again to be continuous and collaborative. Lean UX adopts lean and agile development methodologies, reducing the waste and being able to create products that are focused around the users. A minimum viable product, known as the MVP, is introduced to users as early as possible to receive user feedback on the designed prototypes. Lean UX Canvas integrates a collection of exercises that let teams state their presumptions related to the project. It is intended to encourage communication not only among team members but also with clients, stakeholders, and other workers.
Sprint 1 Design Week 0
In design week 0, Team K focused on establishing the product domain by laying out our assumptions, which are important elements that allow designers to build, test, and either validate or invalidate efficiently throughout the process. Through the Lean UX Canvas, we were able to outline our assumptions in FigJam, later helping us progress through each step of the Canvas.
It all starts with the Business Problem, also known as the problem statement. As a team, we wanted to establish the domain of the product, assess the present state of health-tracking applications, understand why these existing apps have failed, consider how our product may fulfill this need, and discover potential customers. We concluded our answers in the following statement:
“The current state of Lifestyle and Productivity in Health has focused primarily on achieving and improving the user’s personal goals. What existing products/services fail to address is informing the user why their health is in its current state and possible health risks. Our product/service will address this gap by providing the standard gut health through informing instead of problem solving. Our initial focus will be health conscious people. We'll know we are successful when we see user activity remaining consistent or increasing.”
Steps:
- Business problem: What problem does the business have that you are trying to solve?
- Business outcome: How will you know you solved the business problem? What will you measure?
- Users: What types of users and customers should you focus on first?
- User outcomes and benefits: Why would your users seek out your product? What behavior change can we observe that tells us they've achieved their goal?
- Possible solutions: What can we make that will solve our business problem and meet the needs of our customers at the same time?
- Hypotheses: Combine our assumptions.
- What’s the most important thing we need to learn first?
- MVPs and Experiments: What’s the least amount of work we need to do to learn the next most important thing?
After the business problem, we began to brainstorm our business outcomes by using outcome-to-impact mapping. This is where we began to create our assumptions about what design features will be successful for our product. We then began to apply our assumptions to determine what kind of users would benefit from the product. Therefore, Team K created two proto-personas, which are based on only assumptions and will continuously change as data is collected through research and knowledge.
Once we constructed our proto-personas, we proceeded to define their benefits and outcomes, where we determine the users’ reason and purpose for the app. Then we discover solutions to identify patterns and create the desired outcome for Good Shit. After gathering our data and combining our previous steps, we began to construct our hypothesis, which later allowed us to test assumptions and grasp a better understanding of what is the most important things to learn first. This led to converting our hypotheses statements into a product backlog, which allowed us to determine on how to structure each important statement. Therefore, this helped Team K to prioritize our statements and to create our Minimum Viable Products, known as MVPs.
Sprint 1 Design Week 1
2 Day Stand up
Through weekly stand-up meetings, it kept the team updated on each team member’s responsibilities, progress, and certain challenges or issues the project was facing. Team K would meet every two days to ensure everything was addressed and to progress forward with our MVP.
Approach
The approach our team used was Lean UX, which essentially allowed us to be continuous and collaborative. Lean UX adopts lean and agile development methodologies, reducing waste and being able to create products that are focused on the users.
Through this approach, Team K created an agile and creative platform to address important health needs.
Affinity Maps
We began on creating low-fidelty prototypes that were MVP to test on our interviews to receive feedback and thoughts. This helped us have a better understanding on where our product was heading and to recognize the importance of the design adjustments we had to make to reach our objective. We were all given a task to complete, and my task was to create a product page, where users can explore popular products that can help with digestion or anything related to gut health.
After each interview, we would access FigJam to conduct affinity mapping to discover any patterns that the team may have observed from the interview. Each one of us would create sticky notes to place all of our notes from the session and then categorize them into the patterns. Some of these categories were lifestyle, doctor experience/relation, and health. As a team, we then began on validating or invalidating our assumptions that will essentially guide us to progress forward with our prototype.
During Design Week 1, we began on interviewing users to understand their needs and to test our assumptions. Team K used these interviews to ask questions and reflect on the feedback to better our MVPs. We created an interview question script where we asked personal and related questions to their gut health, social life, and how conscious they are about their gut.
Our Interviewees
We thank each one for their cooperation.
Sprint 1 Week 2
After receiving feedback and changing some features on our app, we then proceeded on interviewing three more individuals to gather more thoughts and observations about our change. We repeated the same process from week one by using the affinity mapping method. Team K was able to distinguish significant patterns that were once highlighted throughout the interviews. Some of these users helped us clarify uncertain features that confused them, such as a favorite button on the product page and removing the “New Arrivals” section, and separating the doctor consultation and the past visits.
Retrospective meeting
After our first sprint, a retrospective meeting was made to discuss on what went right, issues that the team encountered, and areas for improvement for Sprint two. Therefore, our first three-week sprint and retrospective meeting allowed us to fully comprehend the Lean UX Canvas and to reevaluate our assumptions. Team K moved forward with our findings to start on our high fidelity prototypes, and to enhance on the user interface and experience. This is where we chose to finalize the visual design of the product to to establish a strong design foundation.
Sprint 2 Design week 0
Revalidation was an important process during Sprint two because it reintroduced the assumptions that were discussed at the beginning of Sprint one. During this time, we moved forward with our new findings and decided on our succession, failures, and areas of improvement. So Team K completed the eight step Lean UX method, but we only revised certain areas that we thought needed some change or to be discarded. Therefore, we then decided to remove the goal-setting feature and the product page due to lack of interest and biased comments. However, we also decided on including three new features that we thought it would the user experience: a profile page, an effective and clear onboarding process, and an articles section regarding gut health. We also decided on updating our product problem statement due to discover users are curious to know more about the health of their stool.
"The current state of the health and lifestyle domain has focused primarily on goal making and improving habits for people who are worried about their health. What existing products/services fail to address is explain why their gut health is the way it is. Our product/service will address this gap by providing a way to log bowel movements to point out patterns to the user, as well as giving the user unbiased/reliable information and tips about their gut health. Our initial focus will be people who are curious about their health and why it’s important even if they’re not necessarily health conscious. We'll know we are successful when we see people are engaged with the app and are willing to recommend it to others."
Proto-personas
Regarding our proto-personas, Team K decided to completely change them because our originals weren’t fitted to our observations. Aria and Kelly weren’t sustainable for our stated assumptions, therefore we created Alexis and Evan. These new proto-personas reflect more on the importance of their interest and awareness in gut health.
Sprint 2 Week 1
During this week, features from our Sprint two backlog were created for our interview sessions. The same method from Sprint One was conducted, along with interview sessions, stand-up meetings, affinity mapping, and continuous discussions. During this phase, we decided to conduct usability testing by assigning Task-based scenarios to each feature. This helped us understand the users’ feedback, how to improve these features, and the importance of each design element. After each interview, we applied our observations on FigJam to begin the affinity mapping process, which once again, helped Team K recognize new categories that benefitted our product. We continued to discuss and design our prototype to deliver a cleaner high fidelity product.
Sprint 2 Week 2
During the last week of Sprint two, we continued to work on the prototype to construct a final high-fidelity application. We completely concluded the visual design of the project to establish a strong and aesthetic design foundation. Once again, we conducted three interviews with our task-based scenarios, where we received final criticism and in-depth feedback about our flow and prototype, and later placed them in our final affinity mapping session.
Toward the end of Sprint two, we refined and concluded our high-fidelity app. Team K gathered together to discuss important improvements that gave us the insight to emphasize the users’ needs and goals. Additional features were included to enhance the overall experience of the user, which later resulted to be a succession throughout interview sessions and observations.
Conclusion
Good Shit was brought to life after eight weeks of hard work, discussions, conflicting issues, and design challenges. Lean UX was an interesting approach for this project, but I think it challenged me to think and to always innovate my designs for the users’ needs. I learned a great number of things when we were researching, communicating, and creating, which I find valuable for my future. I’m a believer that there’s always room to grow, improve, and learn more so I think this was definitely an experience where it supports my thinking.
Due to a tight time frame, Team K wasn’t able to completely understand, interpret, and analyze the features we removed. The product page was a constant back-and-forth confusion because half of our interviewees were unsatisfied with the feature, while others thought it was great and useful for them. If we had more time, I would’ve liked to know why some of the interviewees thought it was unnecessary and unsatisfying by sharing their thoughts and comparing other competitive apps with our idea. I enjoyed being part of Team K and it was definitely a great experience working with them and learning from them. I know this experience will be rewarding and helpful in my career.
Approach
The approach our team used was Lean UX, which essentially allowed us to be continuous and collaborative. Lean UX adopts lean and agile development methodologies, reducing waste and being able to create products that are focused on the users.
Through this approach, Team K created an agile and creative platform to address important health needs.
Report
For our project, we constructed a report that contains our data and analysis of Sin-K. We designed the report on Canva and developed the content on Google Docs in less than two weeks.
Report.png)
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Overview
Physique is an iOS mobile prototype where users can connect, share, and find workouts, discover nutrition habits, and even track their routine and nutrition with others through a positive and welcoming platform. My team’s primary goal was to surface challenges such as integrating a fitness and social media platform into one, creating an interface to display an engaging and positive community, and how to guide users to share their fitness journeys with others.
The purpose of Physique was to create a welcoming community where users can share their fitness journeys and motivate others to reach their personal fitness and wellness goals. The main problem we were trying to solve was finding a way to successfully integrate a social media and fitness platform into one without the negative backlash and false information social media advertises. Furthermore, my team was also focusing on ensuring the application had an organized structure to showcase unique features from the merging of two different platforms, creating a seamless experience for users.
Role
Lead UX Designer
Product Manager
Timeline
February - April 2022
Approach
Goal-Directed Design
Tools
Canva
Discord
Figma/FigJam
Phase One
Problem Statement
Existing fitness and social media platforms prioritize false advertising of exercises and diets, neglect health, and focus solely on monetization and algorithmic bias of user accounts. Our app will fill this void by offering an enjoyable, personalized, and welcoming merging experience, featuring an overview of weekly statistics, an engaging community feed, and a customized profile page.
Method
In this project, we employed the Goal-Directed Design (GDD) process, a product design methodology developed by Alan Cooper. This approach prioritizes crafting designs that align with user needs and goals while also addressing business requirements. The subsequent sections will walk you through each phase of GDD, starting from Research to Refinement. Within these sections, you'll find documentation that highlights insights, challenges, and solutions identified by our design team. This project was undertaken as part of the IAD3000 (Interaction Design I) course at Kennesaw State University under the supervision of Dr. Michael Lahey.
Phase Two
Research
The Research phase of Goal-Directed Design focuses on collecting qualitative data and pertinent information about the subject, domain, and potential users relevant to the product. This phase consists of four major steps: Kickoff Meeting, Literature Review, Competitive Audit, and User Observation/Interviews.
Kickoff Meeting
During Kickoff Meetings, stakeholders introduce the project idea to both design and development teams, which delve into discussions about users, competitors, and challenges, engaging in brainstorming sessions to address fundamental questions. In our class project, there was no official kickoff meeting.
As the team leader, I chose a collaborative approach for the Kickoff Meeting and Stakeholder Interviews. I conducted an affinity map session to brainstorm and collaborate, then assigned each team member a specific part of the research process.
Literature Review
The Literature Review allows designers to dive deeper into relevant literature concerning the upcoming product and its domain. This step is crucial as the gathered insights serve as the foundation for more informed stakeholder and subject matter expert (SME) interviews. I tasked my team individually in this section, focusing on researching nutrition, social media, fitness, influcencers, and current technology that is thriving in the market.
Competitive Audit
In the Competitive Audit phase, the design team reviews systems, interactions, and interfaces of existing products in the same domain. This helps designers understand the strengths and limitations of specific features, along with trends and design patterns in comparable products on the market.
In this research phase, my team and I extensively explored our competitors to comprehend their perspectives and approaches to product development. We specifically studied successful fitness apps like Nike Run & Training Club, Apple Fitness +, Fitbit, Strong, and MyFitnessPal. Analyzing these apps enabled my design team to identify areas where we could enhance our offering in the market. Through thorough observation and analysis of each platform, we gained a clearer understanding of our objectives. Moreover, aligning with our kickoff meeting statement, my design team and I will concentrate on features, reminders, pricing, and the capability to export/import data from wearables like Apple Watch, FitBit, or Samsung Watch, to grasp an understanding of what's been working in the market.
Phase Three
User Research Interviews
In Goal-Directed Design, ethnographic interviews are used to gather essential qualitative data, providing a deeper insight into users and their goals. This approach combines interactive observation with guided interviews, seeking to understand interviewees' contexts and comprehend their attitudes, beliefs, and values related to the product's domain.
The user research process started with creating the Persona Hypothesis, a set of assumptions about potential users and the behavior variables to be observed. The team decided to focus on variables related to interviewees' activities, attitudes, motivations, and skills. Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, in-person user observations were not possible. However, we conducted five online interviews with college students who matched our Persona Hypothesis profile, all conducted via video calls.The majority of our users were in their early twenties and had embraced a fitness lifestyle at some point. With each interviewee having a unique approach to staying fit, we aimed to design an app that brings together individuals with various fitness preferences to connect and learn. Additionally, we inquired about their nutrition practices, including whether they track calories, engage in meal prep, or follow a specific diet to complement their lifestyle.
Through the conduction of five user interviews, my team was able to gather patterns, responses, and diverse viewpoints from individuals to pinpoint and finalize an improved comprehension of our data to create our user personas.
Affinity Mapping
Affinity mapping enabled my team and me to observe recurring characteristics in each interview. As we conducted interviews, we identified a consistent pattern of overlapping behaviors, thoughts, and observations that caught our attention. After completing the interviews, we collaboratively discussed our notes, identifying similarities and connecting points to create groups that incorporated the main observations derived from each interview.
Affinity Mapping Insights2/5
Phase Four
Modeling
The modeling phase in Goal-Directed Design required my team to craft primary and secondary personas, portraying the perspectives of users. Personas, though fictional, are models constructed based on behaviors and goals, representing a broad user group. They offer a clear insight into how different users may behave and their reasoning. Personas play a vital role in Goal-Directed Design as they guide the development process, focusing on user goals. Informed by research and behavior patterns, our personas enabled us to design for specific individual types, addressing various challenges that can hinder product development. They served as a powerful means of communication and analysis, ensuring that the design was thoroughly understood and appreciated by users.
Roxie serves as our primary persona, representing the central focus for Physique. She embodies behaviors like the desire to incorporate exercise into her daily routine, along with motivation and consistency to attain her fitness goals. She desires to be part of a community that inspires her to become a better version of herself.
Lucas, our secondary persona, mirrors behaviors such as maintaining a structured schedule and fitness routine, displaying a passion for workouts, and actively sharing fitness information.
Primary Persona
Secondary Persona
Phase Five
Requirements
The Requirements phase in GDD is important since designers turn their research and observations into solutions that meet user needs. They consider technical constraints and ensure alignment with business goals. As a team, we crafted context scenarios—narratives illustrating the imagined activities of the persona. This approach facilitated the identification of requirements aligned with the structure and functionality of our app. Essentially, our primary goal was to deliver an app where Roxie could learn and explore the path to health within a positive and supportive community.
Key requirements include:
A visually appealing integration of fitness and social media
A dashboard displaying weekly statistics on nutrition and personal stats
A feed to observe the journeys of those you follow
A Profile Page for sharing personal fitness journeys, routines, and accessories.
Phase Six
Frameworks
In the context of GDD, the frameworks phase allowed us to sketch a rough draft of Physique by incorporating key paths and validation scenarios. This phase enables visualization of user goals, behaviors, and needs in a wireframe, outlining the user's journey through a low-fidelity prototype. Once we had a clearer understanding of our requirements, we seamlessly transitioned to frameworks to bring our vision to life. Our wireframes maintained simplicity from start to finish, primarily focusing on outlining the app's structure. They served as a tool to illustrate how we intended to structure and incorporate functionality into the app, emphasizing simplicity and effectiveness. As each team member crafted their wireframes, various user paths became evident, streamlining the prototype process for everyone.
Regarding our wireframes, I realized that I overlooked the importance of this phase, which led to delivering inadequate skeletons. Underestimating wire-framing was the root of complications my team came across because it affected our comprehension and performance of our final prototype. We didn’t value the importance of a design system, components, and a visual system as a whole in the framework stage. Tackling the user interface design in small increments didn’t work effectively as we prioritized the overall appearance, rather than the entire experience.
Key Path and Validation Scenarios
Phase Seven
Refinement
In the final phase, our focus shifted to prototyping on Figma, emphasizing the functionality of the app. We aimed to maintain a functional and user-friendly structure, transitioning from a low-fidelity framework to a fully functional, high-fidelity prototype. Our goal was to deliver an app that is both informative and helpful while being engaging and powerful. To provide a sense of comfort and balance, we incorporated certain characteristics from popular social media apps. We opted for simple, welcoming, and balanced colors to ensure a positive user experience.
Following two usability tests, we received feedback confirming a seamless flow and an effective overall experience. Acknowledging this feedback was crucial to avoid potential complications and frustration for users, a priority we aimed to uphold, particularly in the context of social media.
Furthermore, I created our logo to finalize the brand identity of Physique for my team. This served as a visual representation to convey the value, communicate the brand's identity, establish a memorable and distinctive presence, and foster recognition among the target audience. As a team, we knew it would create brand awareness and leave a lasting impression on consumers.
Logo Alternative
Black and White Logo
Official logo
Secondary Logo
Physique High-Fidelity
Phase Eight
Takeaways
Physique was my first experience in Interaction Design where I inclusively led and managed a product design project. It was an interesting opportunity to observe how we all collaborated to solve a problem. My team’s performance was always prioritized, therefore learning to balance out my team’s strengths and weaknesses to execute an efficient workflow was part of the challenge. However, we managed to circulate our schedules and tackle our pain points to get past our limitations.
After all, I understand the importance of organization and the Frameworks phase. If additional time was given, I would’ve implemented a stronger overview to structure our design insights during our weekly check-ins and project timelines. I think this would’ve helped my team to grasp a clearer perception of Physique, especially during the Frameworks phase. It all bounces back together, which demonstrates that an improved structure could’ve led to improved wireframes by following principles of information architecture and performing more well-rounded user interviews.
It was an exciting experience to not only create but lead a product design project from beginning to end. I learned the significance of creating seamless experiences requires patience, communication, and structure. I also learned that I enjoy guiding individuals and implementing a positive space to share and grow together. Thankfully, I can apply my knowledge and expertise in future projects and a team of designers!
How to Logic Pro
Recap of project
Tools: FigJam, Figma, Canva, & Discord
Role: Designer and Researcher
Duration: October-December 2022
Team Members: Janice Kim, Jordan Scavo, & Jessie Wu
Approach
The approach our team used was Lean UX, which essentially allowed us to be continuous and collaborative. Lean UX adopts lean and agile development methodologies, reducing waste and being able to create products that are focused on the users.
Through this approach, Team K created an agile and creative platform to address important health needs.
Challenges we faced
- Creating and integrating an informational gut health tracker
- Design an educational yet informational platform where users can learn and understand their bowel movements
- Incorporating medication and doctor consultations for users to become more knowledgeable of their digestion system
Introduction
Questions and concerns rise when we take a look at the toilet after the disaster has finished. Some are left satisfied and continue with their day, while others worry about the color, shape, and even smell of the feces. Therefore, Good Shit is a tracking app that will log every number two the user experiences. The app is essentially focused in the gut health, where several digestion problems start. The app initially did not have a name or logo, so I began to brainstorm some names and possible logo designs. Once I introduced the word-mark logo of the idea Good Shit, the team approved of it and made it official. Team K focused to deliver an app that helps users become more informed, happy, and healthy about their Good Shit.
Good Shit is a gut health tracker that focuses on informing users about their digestion health and bowel movements. Through Lean UX, our team was able to construct a gut health tracker that identifies, satisfies the users’ goals, along by acknowledging the importance of the business needs.
For my interaction design two course, each student had the opportunity to pitch an idea that they would like to create using the Lean UX approach. Janice Kim pitched the idea of creating a gut health app that informed users to be more conscious and aware of their digestion health and bowel movements. I decided to pursue her vision because of how unique and fun the idea was presented to be. The team was consisted of Janice Kim, Jessie Wu, and Jordan Scavo. Through constant communication, Team K was focused on creating an user-interface application where users acknowledge the importance of gut health.
What is Lean UX?
This project was done through Lean UX, which is once again to be continuous and collaborative. Lean UX adopts lean and agile development methodologies, reducing the waste and being able to create products that are focused around the users. A minimum viable product, known as the MVP, is introduced to users as early as possible to receive user feedback on the designed prototypes. Lean UX Canvas integrates a collection of exercises that let teams state their presumptions related to the project. It is intended to encourage communication not only among team members but also with clients, stakeholders, and other workers.
Sprint 1 Design Week 0
In design week 0, Team K focused on establishing the product domain by laying out our assumptions, which are important elements that allow designers to build, test, and either validate or invalidate efficiently throughout the process. Through the Lean UX Canvas, we were able to outline our assumptions in FigJam, later helping us progress through each step of the Canvas.
It all starts with the Business Problem, also known as the problem statement. As a team, we wanted to establish the domain of the product, assess the present state of health-tracking applications, understand why these existing apps have failed, consider how our product may fulfill this need, and discover potential customers. We concluded our answers in the following statement:
“The current state of Lifestyle and Productivity in Health has focused primarily on achieving and improving the user’s personal goals. What existing products/services fail to address is informing the user why their health is in its current state and possible health risks. Our product/service will address this gap by providing the standard gut health through informing instead of problem solving. Our initial focus will be health conscious people. We'll know we are successful when we see user activity remaining consistent or increasing.”
Steps:
- Business problem: What problem does the business have that you are trying to solve?
- Business outcome: How will you know you solved the business problem? What will you measure?
- Users: What types of users and customers should you focus on first?
- User outcomes and benefits: Why would your users seek out your product? What behavior change can we observe that tells us they've achieved their goal?
- Possible solutions: What can we make that will solve our business problem and meet the needs of our customers at the same time?
- Hypotheses: Combine our assumptions.
- What’s the most important thing we need to learn first?
- MVPs and Experiments: What’s the least amount of work we need to do to learn the next most important thing?
After the business problem, we began to brainstorm our business outcomes by using outcome-to-impact mapping. This is where we began to create our assumptions about what design features will be successful for our product. We then began to apply our assumptions to determine what kind of users would benefit from the product. Therefore, Team K created two proto-personas, which are based on only assumptions and will continuously change as data is collected through research and knowledge.
Once we constructed our proto-personas, we proceeded to define their benefits and outcomes, where we determine the users’ reason and purpose for the app. Then we discover solutions to identify patterns and create the desired outcome for Good Shit. After gathering our data and combining our previous steps, we began to construct our hypothesis, which later allowed us to test assumptions and grasp a better understanding of what is the most important things to learn first. This led to converting our hypotheses statements into a product backlog, which allowed us to determine on how to structure each important statement. Therefore, this helped Team K to prioritize our statements and to create our Minimum Viable Products, known as MVPs.
Sprint 1 Design Week 1
2 Day Stand up
Through weekly stand-up meetings, it kept the team updated on each team member’s responsibilities, progress, and certain challenges or issues the project was facing. Team K would meet every two days to ensure everything was addressed and to progress forward with our MVP.
Affinity Maps
We began on creating low-fidelty prototypes that were MVP to test on our interviews to receive feedback and thoughts. This helped us have a better understanding on where our product was heading and to recognize the importance of the design adjustments we had to make to reach our objective. We were all given a task to complete, and my task was to create a product page, where users can explore popular products that can help with digestion or anything related to gut health.
After each interview, we would access FigJam to conduct affinity mapping to discover any patterns that the team may have observed from the interview. Each one of us would create sticky notes to place all of our notes from the session and then categorize them into the patterns. Some of these categories were lifestyle, doctor experience/relation, and health. As a team, we then began on validating or invalidating our assumptions that will essentially guide us to progress forward with our prototype.
During Design Week 1, we began on interviewing users to understand their needs and to test our assumptions. Team K used these interviews to ask questions and reflect on the feedback to better our MVPs. We created an interview question script where we asked personal and related questions to their gut health, social life, and how conscious they are about their gut.
Sprint 1 Week 2
After receiving feedback and changing some features on our app, we then proceeded on interviewing three more individuals to gather more thoughts and observations about our change. We repeated the same process from week one by using the affinity mapping method. Team K was able to distinguish significant patterns that were once highlighted throughout the interviews. Some of these users helped us clarify uncertain features that confused them, such as a favorite button on the product page and removing the “New Arrivals” section, and separating the doctor consultation and the past visits.
Retrospective meeting
After our first sprint, a retrospective meeting was made to discuss on what went right, issues that the team encountered, and areas for improvement for Sprint two. Therefore, our first three-week sprint and retrospective meeting allowed us to fully comprehend the Lean UX Canvas and to reevaluate our assumptions. Team K moved forward with our findings to start on our high fidelity prototypes, and to enhance on the user interface and experience. This is where we chose to finalize the visual design of the product to to establish a strong design foundation.
Sprint 2 Design week 0
Revalidation was an important process during Sprint two because it reintroduced the assumptions that were discussed at the beginning of Sprint one. During this time, we moved forward with our new findings and decided on our succession, failures, and areas of improvement. So Team K completed the eight step Lean UX method, but we only revised certain areas that we thought needed some change or to be discarded. Therefore, we then decided to remove the goal-setting feature and the product page due to lack of interest and biased comments. However, we also decided on including three new features that we thought it would the user experience: a profile page, an effective and clear onboarding process, and an articles section regarding gut health. We also decided on updating our product problem statement due to discover users are curious to know more about the health of their stool.
"The current state of the health and lifestyle domain has focused primarily on goal making and improving habits for people who are worried about their health. What existing products/services fail to address is explain why their gut health is the way it is. Our product/service will address this gap by providing a way to log bowel movements to point out patterns to the user, as well as giving the user unbiased/reliable information and tips about their gut health. Our initial focus will be people who are curious about their health and why it’s important even if they’re not necessarily health conscious. We'll know we are successful when we see people are engaged with the app and are willing to recommend it to others."
Proto-personas
Regarding our proto-personas, Team K decided to completely change them because our originals weren’t fitted to our observations. Aria and Kelly weren’t sustainable for our stated assumptions, therefore we created Alexis and Evan. These new proto-personas reflect more on the importance of their interest and awareness in gut health.
Sprint 2 Week 1
During this week, features from our Sprint two backlog were created for our interview sessions. The same method from Sprint One was conducted, along with interview sessions, stand-up meetings, affinity mapping, and continuous discussions. During this phase, we decided to conduct usability testing by assigning Task-based scenarios to each feature. This helped us understand the users’ feedback, how to improve these features, and the importance of each design element. After each interview, we applied our observations on FigJam to begin the affinity mapping process, which once again, helped Team K recognize new categories that benefitted our product. We continued to discuss and design our prototype to deliver a cleaner high fidelity product.
Sprint 2 Week 2
During the last week of Sprint two, we continued to work on the prototype to construct a final high-fidelity application. We completely concluded the visual design of the project to establish a strong and aesthetic design foundation. Once again, we conducted three interviews with our task-based scenarios, where we received final criticism and in-depth feedback about our flow and prototype, and later placed them in our final affinity mapping session.
Toward the end of Sprint two, we refined and concluded our high-fidelity app. Team K gathered together to discuss important improvements that gave us the insight to emphasize the users’ needs and goals. Additional features were included to enhance the overall experience of the user, which later resulted to be a succession throughout interview sessions and observations.
Conclusion
Good Shit was brought to life after eight weeks of hard work, discussions, conflicting issues, and design challenges. Lean UX was an interesting approach for this project, but I think it challenged me to think and to always innovate my designs for the users’ needs. I learned a great number of things when we were researching, communicating, and creating, which I find valuable for my future. I’m a believer that there’s always room to grow, improve, and learn more so I think this was definitely an experience where it supports my thinking.
Due to a tight time frame, Team K wasn’t able to completely understand, interpret, and analyze the features we removed. The product page was a constant back-and-forth confusion because half of our interviewees were unsatisfied with the feature, while others thought it was great and useful for them. If we had more time, I would’ve liked to know why some of the interviewees thought it was unnecessary and unsatisfying by sharing their thoughts and comparing other competitive apps with our idea. I enjoyed being part of Team K and it was definitely a great experience working with them and learning from them. I know this experience will be rewarding and helpful in my career.
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Overview
Good Shit is an educational gut health tracker application that focuses on informing users about their digestion health and bowel movements. The primary goal was to inform, identify, educate, and value the importance of digestion health. Team Janice's focus was to surface challenges such as creating and integrating an informational gut health tracker, designing an educational yet informational platform where users can learn and understand their bowel movements, and incorporating medication and doctor consultations for users to become more knowledgeable about their digestion system.
Moreover, Team Janice recognized the challenges inherent in developing a holistic gut health tracker and educational platform. Creating an informational gut health tracker required thoughtful consideration of data input methods and user-friendly interfaces to ensure seamless tracking of daily habits. The design of the educational platform demanded a delicate balance between providing in-depth information about digestive health and presenting it in an easily understandable and engaging manner. Integrating features for medication tracking and doctor consultations posed technical challenges, such as ensuring data privacy and secure communication channels between users and healthcare professionals. Despite these challenges, Team Janice's commitment to fostering user awareness and knowledge about digestion health has resulted in the creation of Good Shit, a versatile and user-centric application that goes beyond conventional health tracking to address the broader aspects of digestive well-being.
Role
UX Designer
UX Researcher
Timeline
October-December 2022
Approach
Lean UX
Tools
Canva
Discord
Figma/FigJam
Background
What is Lean UX?
Lean UX is a user-centered design approach that integrates principles from user experience (UX) design, Lean startup methodology, and Agile development. It emphasizes a collaborative and iterative process focused on delivering value to users. Therefore, this method allowed us to prioritize outcomes over features. It centered on testing assumptions through minimum viable products (MVPs), gathering early feedback, and continuous iteration. Our class project, conducted for IAD4000 (Interaction Design II) at Kennesaw State University and supervised by Dr. Michael Lahey, followed this process.
Problem Statement
The purpose of Good Shit is to inform others about the importance of gut health. The established domain highlighted that several health-tracking applications fail to educate users and offer a proper structure to record logins of their own digestion health. Our initial problem statement was finalized towards the end of the project once we revalidated our findings. We concluded that
The health and lifestyle field mainly emphasizes goal-setting for health-conscious individuals. Existing products fall short in explaining why gut health is the way it is. Our solution addresses this gap by allowing users to log bowel movements, identify patterns, and providing unbiased information on gut health. We target those curious about health, not just the health-conscious. Success for us is seeing active user engagement and positive recommendations.
Initial Proto-Personas
In Lean UX, Proto-Personas are hypothetical users embodying our team's assumptions about the potential users of our product and their motivations. These Proto-Personas can evolve within our timeline as the team gains insights from user research.
Following the identification of the business problem, we utilized outcome-to-impact mapping to brainstorm potential business outcomes. This led to the formation of assumptions about successful design features for our product. We applied these assumptions to identify the potential users who would benefit from our product. Team Janice crafted two Proto-personas based solely on these assumptions, understanding that they will change eventually through ongoing research and learning.
Primary Proto-Persona
Secondary Proto-Persona
Sprint Backlog
The Sprint Backlog is a list of design experiments (MVPs) that the team needs to build and test with users, organized based on priority. After forming our Proto-Personas, we defined the benefits and outcomes by understanding users' reasons for using the app. We then identified solutions, analyzed patterns, and shaped the desired outcome for Good Shit. Combining data from previous steps, we built hypotheses to test assumptions and gain a better understanding of essential learnings. These hypotheses were transformed into a product backlog, guiding the structuring of key statements. This process enabled Team Janice to prioritize and create our Minimum Viable Products (MVPs).
Sprint 1 Backlog
Sprint 1
MVP: User Research
Our team divided tasks for the first week of the sprint. Janice focused on creating a database of common causes of symptoms, Jordan designed screens for doctor's prescriptions and treatment info, Jessie handled the doctor consultation screens, and I worked on the products page, where users can explore popular products that can help with digestion or anything related to gut healing. Each of us developed our prototypes, and before the initial interviews, we merged them. After building our assigned features, we formulated interview questions and conducted interviews with three potential users. One team member moderated the session, while others facilitated and took notes.
Stand-Up Meetings (Daily Scrum)
To maintain responsibility and team alignment, we held short planning meetings every two days throughout the project. As Janice was our Scrum Master, she facilitated discussions, recorded team progress since the last meeting, and noted tasks scheduled for completion before the next stand-up. She kept the team updated on each team member’s responsibilities, progress, and certain challenges or issues the project was facing.
Affinity Mapping
After each interview, we utilized FigJam for affinity mapping, which helped us identify patterns observed by the team. Each team member created sticky notes to organize session notes into categories like lifestyle, doctor experience/relation, and health. As a team, we then validated or invalidated our assumptions, guiding us in progressing with our prototype. In Design Week 1, we interviewed users to understand their needs and test assumptions. Team Janice used these interviews to refine our MVPs by asking questions related to personal aspects, gut health, social life, and awareness.
Paula DeCastro's Affinity Mapping
Paula DeCastro's Patterns
User Research Observations
After getting feedback and making changes to our app, we interviewed three more people to gather additional thoughts. We followed the same process as in week one, using affinity mapping. Team Janice identified significant patterns highlighted during the interviews, which helped us identify major setbacks and grasp a stronger understanding. Some users helped clarify confusing features, such as the favorite button, removing the "New Arrivals" section, and separating doctor consultations and past visits.
Retrospective Meeting
After our initial sprint, we held a retrospective meeting to review successes, team challenges, and identify areas for improvement in Sprint Two. This three-week sprint and retrospective deepened our understanding of the Lean UX Canvas and prompted a reassessment of our assumptions. Team Janice used these insights to advance to high-fidelity prototypes, focusing on enhancing the user interface and experience. Previously as a team, we didn't value and acknowledge the importance of a design system. We dove into what they were and the purpose they provide to a product.
Therefore, Design systems are organized sets of reusable design elements, patterns, and guidelines that guarantee consistency and efficiency in creating digital products. They consist of components, patterns, guidelines, and assets like color palettes and typography styles. After grasping this understanding, we managed to prioritize this to ensure visual and functional consistency, and uphold a unified brand identity. This phase marked the finalization of the product's design system, establishing a robust foundation for our design approach and brand identity.
Finalized Design System
Sprint 2
Revalidation
Revalidation played a crucial role in Sprint Two as it revisited the assumptions from the beginning of Sprint One. During this phase, we moved forward with our fresh insights, evaluating successes, failures, and areas for improvement. Team Janice completed the eight-step Lean UX method, selectively revising specific areas. We chose to remove the goal-setting feature and the product page due to low interest and biased comments. Simultaneously, we introduced three new features— a profile page, an effective onboarding process, and an articles section on gut health, aiming to enhance the user experience. Additionally, we updated our product problem statement based on the discovery that users are curious to learn more about the health of their stool.
New Proto-Personas
Concerning our Proto-Personas, Team Janice opted for a complete overhaul due to the mismatch with our observations. Aria and Kelly didn't align with our stated assumptions, leading us to create Alexis and Evan. These new Proto-Personas better emphasize the significance of their interest and awareness in gut health.
Updated Primary Proto-Persona
Updated Secondary Proto-Persona
User Research Observations
We created features from our Sprint Two backlog for interview sessions, following the same method as in Sprint One—interview sessions, stand-up meetings, affinity mapping, and continuous discussions. In this phase, we introduced usability testing with task-based scenarios for each feature, gaining insights into user feedback and design element importance. Post-interviews, we used FigJam to apply observations and conduct affinity mapping, identifying new categories beneficial to our product. Team Janice consistently discussed and designed our prototype, aiming to deliver a polished high-fidelity product.
Refinement
In the final week of Sprint Two, we focused on completing the prototype to achieve a polished high-fidelity application. We finalized the visual design to establish a robust and visually appealing foundation. Conducting three interviews with task-based scenarios provided valuable criticism and detailed feedback on our flow and prototype, incorporated into our final affinity mapping session. As Sprint Two came to a close, Team Janice refined and completed our high-fidelity app. Collaboratively, we identified crucial improvements that highlighted users' needs and goals. Additional features were introduced to enhance the overall user experience, proving successful in subsequent interview sessions and observations.
Final Designs
I contributed to various screens and sections, actively participating in discussions. Team Janice collectively decided to refine and finalize the app's visual design.
In these screens, I emphasized cohesiveness to enhance the overall user experience for app users.
Homepage
My Profile Screen
Logging Screen
My Profile - Insurance Screen
Conclusion
Takeaways
Good Shit was my second experience in Interaction Design but as a team designer. While our leader equipped us with her vision, resources, and guidance, the other team members and I focused on creating the necessary. It was an interesting opportunity to work with others and learn about their workflow, knowledge, and opinions. Our leader prioritized communication and honesty, which were a huge influence on our decision-making. Our team had a great connection with each other, which was a plus because it allowed us to be comfortable with our team members.
Lessons learned
Something that I wish that could’ve been different is having trust. Insufficient trust led to being part of the uncertainty in our decision-making. As we made changes, some of our members were concerned about not being able to meet deadlines in our timeline. This led to members being comfortable with the initial designs and not responding well to innovation from our findings.
As previously stated, not having enough time to further our insights led to unresolved questions and concerns. If we had a stronger trust connection, I think our team would’ve been more open, proactive to change and recognized the importance of sharing their concern, and creating or supporting a game plan. Our leader was very considerate and anticipated our team members' concerns by being accommodating and reasonable with our schedules and overall workflow.
After all, if additional time had been given during this project, we would’ve focused on setting up more user interviews and usability testing to expand on our insights and questions we had. Furthermore, this would’ve helped us to support our design implementation and clearer identification of product problems.
Overall
Creating Good Shit was an exciting and spontaneously fun experience to create a gut tracker application that can actually be extremely valuable and functional for millions of users who are actually interested and would like to learn more about their digestion heath. If this was launched or introduced in the future, I would’ve personally used the application to become more conscious about my gut and be more proactive about my wellness. During this project, I learned the significance of exploring new ideas and design approaches without fear or limitations. It definitely challenged the team but I think it demonstrated to us how each team member responded to change. We accommodated each other and we were pleased with our final outcome! Thankfully, I can apply my knowledge and expertise in the design world!
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Overview
Aura is an interactive digital kiosk where we primarily focus on providing users with a smooth and innovative shopping experience. Through Aura, it will integrate with retail companies to deliver enhanced customer satisfaction when it comes to shopping. Furthermore, users were able to pick up online orders and have an opportunity to perform a seasonal color analysis to discover their colors for fashion. Our primary goal was to create our digital kiosk to be innovative and engaging for all users.
Aura captures the individual preferences of its users and customizes its responses to match their distinctive styles. This tool proves valuable for individuals seeking to simplify their shopping process and optimize their fashion collection. The originality came from our Team Lead, Janice Kim, who has a passion for shopping and fashion, and sought to explore a method of how to teach users to grasp a better understanding of color analysis and overall shopping experience.
Role
UX Designer
UX Researcher
Timeline
February - April 2023
Approach
Goal-Directed Design
Tools
Canva
Discord
Figma/FigJam
Phase One
Problem Statement
Existing interactive kiosks prioritize contactless services, neglecting personalizations and recommendations, while several focus solely on sales engagements and transactions. Our kiosk will fill this void by offering an enjoyable, personalized, and efficient shopping experience, featuring seasonal color analysis, online order pickups, and item reservations.
Method
In this project, we used the Goal-Directed Design (GDD) process, a product design approach by Alan Cooper. It focuses on creating designs that meet user needs and goals while addressing business requirements. The following sections guide you through each GDD phase, from Research to Refinement, with documentation showcasing our design team's insights, challenges, and solutions. This project was part of the TCIAD4700 (Capstone Project and Portfolio Showcase) requirements at Kennesaw State University, supervised by Dr. Leslie Hankey
Phase Two
Research
The Research phase of Goal-Directed Design focuses on collecting qualitative data and pertinent information about the subject, domain, and potential users relevant to the product. This phase consists of four major steps: Kickoff Meeting, Literature Review, Competitive Audit, and User Observation/Interviews.
Kickoff Meeting
In Kickoff Meetings, stakeholders present the project idea to both design and development teams. Designers discuss users, competitors, and challenges, brainstorming to answer key questions. In our class project, Team Janice collaborated to form a problem statement and assumptions statements, guiding our process to simplify everything.
Literature Review
The Literature Review allows designers to delve into relevant literature about the product and its domain. This step is crucial as it forms the basis for well-informed interviews with stakeholders and subject matter experts (SMEs).
Team Janice conducted the Literature Review, uncovering valuable insights that we will share.
1. The popularity of retail kiosks increased post-pandemic as customers have adjusted to no employee interactions.
2. Retail Kiosks are convenient, easy, and quick for all users, enhancing their shopping experience.
3. A positive experience will resonate with the customer, and they will be more likely to use the kiosk again in the future.
Competitive Audit
During the Competitive Audit phase, the design team examines systems, interactions, and interfaces of existing products in the same domain. This provides insight into the strengths, limitations, trends, and design patterns of comparable products on the market.
Competitive Audit Glimpse
Phase Three
User Research Interviews
In Goal-Directed Design, we use ethnographic interviews to collect important qualitative data for a deeper understanding of users and their goals. This method blends engaging observation and guided interviews, aiming to grasp interviewees' contexts and comprehend their attitudes, beliefs, and values concerning the product's domain.
To achieve a complete and in-depth understanding of the development of Aura, we conducted five user interviews to collect patterns, answers, and different perspectives from individuals. As we conducted these interviews, we came to an understanding that some of our interviewees had similarities and differences in their shopping experience, retail, and in-store or online orders. Team Kim was able to acknowledge and differentiate our findings, that later shaped our user personas.
Affinity Mapping
Affinity mapping is a crucial technique in the field of design and problem-solving, providing a visual and collaborative way to organize and make sense of diverse ideas, information, and insights. By grouping related concepts, patterns, and observations, affinity mapping helps teams simplify complex data into clear, manageable topics. This process fosters shared understanding, promotes collaboration, and unveils potential solutions or directions. The visual representation facilitates more effective decision-making, enabling teams to prioritize and address key issues structurally. Ultimately, affinity mapping served as a powerful tool to streamline communication, enhance creativity, and drive the development of Aura.
Affinity Mapping 2/5
Phase Four
Modeling
During the modeling stage of the Goal-Directed Design, our team had to create primary and secondary personas that represent the user's point of view. Personas are not real, but fictitious users or models built through behaviors and goals that represent large groups of users. Personas provide a clear approach to understanding how different users behave and why. Personas are essential to goal-driven design because they are the people to consider when developing and focusing on user goals. Through research and behavioral patterns, our personas have allowed us to design for specific types of people that overcome some of the issues that derail product development. It's an effective way to communicate and analyze your designs so that your users can fully understand and enjoy them.
"Personas are successful as user models because they are anthropomorphic. Design and development empathize with user goals is built in (Cooper 66)."
Primary Persona
Secondary Persona
Phase Five
Requirements
The Requirements phase in GDD is a pivotal step in the design process. Here, designers transform their research and observations into solutions that meet user needs, navigating technical constraints and aligning with business goals.
For Context Scenarios, we employed narrative as a design tool to vividly depict a user's interaction with our product system. These scenarios take the form of a short narrative, portraying a day in the life of the Persona and outlining their actions and expectations with the product at a high level.
Phase Six
Frameworks
In the Design Framework phase of GDD, we establish the structure of our product's system interface by organizing interactive behaviors, visual language, and functionality. This journey commences with the Interaction Framework, crafting low-fidelity wireframes, and progresses to the Visual Design Framework, defining a distinct visual style and identity.
Moving onto wireframes, they act as digital design blueprints, determining element placement and user flow. Their simplicity allows easy adjustments based on feedback before finalizing the appearance. Serving as a universal language for project collaborators, wireframes prioritize functionality over aesthetics. These foundational tools played a crucial role in planning and refining digital designs for our project, Aura. Through wireframes, Team Janice was able to establish the structure and functionality.
Wireframe/IA Glimpse
Design Systems
Design systems are structured collections of reusable design elements, patterns, and guidelines that ensure consistency and efficiency in digital product development. They include components, patterns, guidelines, and assets like color palettes and typography styles.
The benefits of design systems include promoting visual and functional consistency, streamlining the design and development process for increased efficiency, fostering collaboration among teams, addressing accessibility concerns, and maintaining a cohesive brand identity. In essence, design systems serve as a structured framework that improves the overall user experience and contributes to the success of digital products and brand recognition.
As a team, we truly valued the importance of establishing a design system, to successfully deliver structured guidance that would not only help us as designers, but our users to increase Aura's visual recognition and overall user experience.
Aura Design System
Phase Seven
Refinement
The Refinement phase signifies the shift from low-fidelity wireframes to a high-fidelity, fully functional prototype. This stage involves enhancing form and behavior, resulting in high-resolution screens that vividly represent the user interface. Essentially, the Refinement phase in GDD is where the product comes to life both visually and interactively.
Dashboard Menu
Logout
Orders
View Order
Phase Eight
Takeaways
Aura was my Senior and Capstone project where students were responsible for their resources, software tools, and project management of this experience. We had three professors as mentors, but they simply instructed us with the requirements, methodology, and contact information for any future questions and concerns. It was a raw journey because we had to tackle this experience alone with what we knew already. My team members were equipped with intelligence, positive attitudes, active listeners, accountability, empathy, and awesome communication skills. We were ready to strive and excel together. After all, if additional time had been given during this project, we would’ve focused on setting up more user interviews and usability testing to expand on our insights and questions we had. Furthermore, this would’ve helped us to support our design implementation and clearer identification of product problems. Once again, our team had no issues in being proactive and open with their ideas. We had no internal conflicts and were consistent with their deadlines. They never failed to express their concerns towards any alerting situations, which was a highlight and strength in Team Janice. It was absolutely enjoyable and amusing to work with creative individuals who wanted to accomplish the same goal that everyone had in mind.
Being part of Aura was an exciting and spontaneously fun experience to create a Retail SAAS product that can be extremely valuable and functional for millions of users and retail companies. I strongly believe if this was launched or introduced in the future, it would bring a positive impact to the retail industry and shopping experience. During this project, I learned the significance of how influential information architecture is when it comes to structuring your content. Furthermore, it allows us to appropriately outline the navigation system and user flows to acquire an understanding of how to navigate and achieve user goals. Overall, Team Kim was extremely satisfied with our outcome and I’m thankful that I can apply my expertise in the future.
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Overview
The hackathon was sponsored by 66Degrees, BeMyApp, and Google at the Google Atlanta office. The event was named Build with Google: Google Workspace and AppSheet.
66Degrees specializes in helping businesses across all industries modernize through cloud adoption to achieve data-driven transformation. As a pure-play Google Cloud partner, their team of experts leverages the latest Google Cloud technologies and best practices to create customized solutions for each client.
During this hackathon, teams gained feedback and guidance on their apps from 66degrees and Google experts. Companies and independent developers participated to learn and create a solution to compete for prizes. It was a dream come true to visit Google Atlanta and to create something impactful with talented people.
Role
UX Designer
Presenter
Timeline
October 23, 2023 - October 24, 2023
Place
1st Place
($5000 Cash Prize)
Tools
Figma
AppSheet
Google Slides
Meet the team
Phase one
The kickstart
Identify the problem
"Organizations face difficulties in ensuring employees' adherence to mandatory vaccinations and health check-ups for international travel, resulting in possible project delays and collaboration disruptions. "
Our challenge was to build something that can be used by different types of healthcare organizations or businesses, therefore, we derived our focus into simplifying medical and healthcare requirements among our team when it comes to corporate international travel. We discussed about the hassle several individuals face when they're scheduled to fly to another country for business purposes. The list of medical requirements can be exhausting and time-consuming to understand and complete, leading to health risks and delayed project timelines.
Establish the solution
MedPass is a passport to seamless corporate international travel by simplifying medical requirements and status updates, ensuring employee safety and project timelines.
Our team's solution is an application called MedPass, which focuses on reducing administrative burdens and health-related risks, adhering to mandatory health protocols, and mitigating the risk of disruptions and project execution, by automating and organizing medical documentation through dynamic emails and status updates.
Target Audience
Our main audience was large corporations and their employees. We wanted to identify our users at once to understand the user flows. While we didn’t have enough time to create personas, we knew our audience was busy individuals, who sought a method to understand what medical requirements are necessary to complete without affecting their workload and team management.
We proceeded to focus on our information architecture to construct our navigation system and user flows.
Navigating user goals and pain points
Towards the end of this phase, our emphasis was on translating our research findings into a user-centric design solution. We derived our context scenario draft from identified goals and pain points, aligning user needs with potential solutions. It helped us ground our product in corporate business travel, prioritizing a seamless and safe space.
User Goals:
Prepare and notify employees about required vaccines and check-ups for international travel
Allow a seamless vaccination and check-in update for international travel
Pain Points:
Action items must be complete or it’ll prevent employees from traveling
Incomplete action items can lead to project delays and hinder team collaboration, causing a backlog of work
Phase two
Innovation unveiled
Mastering AppSheet
Part of the hackathon challenge was to learn and utilize AppSheet as the main software to create a functional prototype. AppSheet is a no-code platform that empowers users to create custom mobile and web applications. It uses a spreadsheet-like interface, making it accessible for users to define data, workflows, and application logic.
Due to splitting our team into pairs, Jordy and Ali's priority was to begin development. They spent endless hours learning the fundamentals of AppSheet through tutorials, mentorship, and hands-on experience. Thanks to 66 Degrees for demonstrating interesting approaches and answering our questions as we continued to develop.
Ideation
After identifying user goals and pain points to determine user outcomes, Elizabeth and I agreed that this would help us recognize areas for improvement and innovation, develop a clear UX strategy, and approve design decisions. It would also empower us to evaluate the project’s success and make adjustments as proceed forward. In the hope of achieving user goals and to avoid obstacles that may invoke difficulty, we began our
Ready. Set. Deploy!
Once Jordy and Ali had an established understanding of AppSheet, they began to create our prototype. During this phase, we continued to ask questions to each other to clarify any gaps that would've hindered our problem and solution space, along with our deadline. Through automation, they were able to execute a dynamic email and connect data through the integration with Google Workspace. In the end, they were able to develop our codeless product as accurately as possible by following our user flows and establishing the navigation system.
The Visual Alchemy
After ideating, we continued as pairs to complete our checklist before time was up. Elizabeth and I constructed a document to record our thoughts and findings and then transitioned our finalized content into a well-rounded presentation. As a team, we agreed on including a logo to increase brand recognition and create a connection for initial trust. Therefore, I created a simple, yet effective logo for MedPass. Before moving forward, we successfully coordinated our timeline and direction of the project. Our team knew that user experience and brand recognition were fundamental components for success, and must be part of the presentation deck.
Phase three
Design Handover
Seal the deal
Once Elizabeth and I concluded our presentation deck, we checked in with Jordy and Ali about the prototype's progress. They ran several executions to ensure full functionality for our presentation and everything was successful. We quickly crafted some mock-ups and GIFs, to help visually communicate MedPass to the judge panel.
Approach
The approach our team used was Lean UX, which essentially allowed us to be continuous and collaborative. Lean UX adopts lean and agile development methodologies, reducing waste and being able to create products that are focused on the users.
Through this approach, Team K created an agile and creative platform to address important health needs.
Final Design
Here are some mock-ups that represent our simple prototype, which effectively clarifies our end goal and provides a clearer perception. It highlights the keyframes that serve as an outline.
To improve the user experience and practicality of our application for users, we implemented coherence throughout our prototype.
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Splash
Health Centers
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Assignments Form
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Employee List
Practice, prepare, and present
After revising and finalizing our mock-ups into our presentation deck, Elizabeth and I began to practice our presentation skills. We ran through several runs to find our strengths and weaknesses, and improve each other's performance. We both understood our priority was to finish before the 4-minute mark and reveal our idea to the judging panel. After practicing for 20 minutes, we wrapped it up and went back with our team to prepare ourselves for presentations
Approach
The approach our team used was Lean UX, which essentially allowed us to be continuous and collaborative. Lean UX adopts lean and agile development methodologies, reducing waste and being able to create products that are focused on the users.
Through this approach, Team K created an agile and creative platform to address important health needs.
Phase four
Reflections
Results
Winning first place was such an amazing feeling we felt as a team. We were very proud of each other and how Team Black Cats managed to remain positive and trust the process. When I initially found out about this event, I was skeptical about it because I didn't know what to expect as a UX Designer. I wasn't sure if it was the right event for individuals in my field, but I still signed up to show up, establish connections, and simply have fun. I didn’t care about the prize, I simply wanted to gain an unforgettable experience and I’m glad I did. Because of our hard work and dedication, Black Cats was awarded first place and received the $5k prize. We were ecstatic with the outcome and we celebrated our success by having dinner together to celebrate, reflect on our work, and express our gratitude towards each other.
Learnings
Because this was my first hackathon, I was nervous but excited about the experience. I learned so much and was satisfied with the outcome and the people I met. Some major takeaways were:
Communicate and comprehend effectively
Working with two individuals who had never worked with UX previously on a cross-functional team forced Elizabeth and me to justify our choices and involve them thoroughly in our user-thinking process. Therefore, communication was key to our team because we had to ensure our each team member needed to understand our approach towards the project.
Ask questions, get answers
It was important to ask questions when we had problems or concerns to move forward with our decision-making. Given our short timeframe, we used our resources and asked our mentors to decide on our design and development decisions.
Balance out the strengths and weaknesses
Acknowledging our team's strengths and weaknesses allowed us to work in pairs and tackle the project with what we knew best and the positive impact it would bring. Through this decision, we were comfortable with our responsibilities and trust each other with the process despite the challenges we still faced.
Organize and structure
We had a short timeline to create and submit our deliverables as a team. We took our time to construct a plan and to execute productively to receive the best outcome.
Ready to connect?
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