Aiming to Improve the Lives of Those with Osteoporosis
01
Overview
My Role: UX/UI Product Designer
Duration: March 2022 - April 2022
Tools: Figma, Maze, Asana
Platform: Mobile
Problem:
"How might we reimagine older adults’ care experience after breaking a bone due to osteoporosis to ensure their first fracture is their last?"
Solution:
OsteoCare is an app that allows newly diagnosed patients keep track of their life post-diagnosis. Our “all-in-one tool” can facilitate the patients’ adaptation process by managing their medications, diet, and exercise habits much more easily.
02
Understanding Osteoporosis
Scientific Research
Osteoporosis was a foreign topic going into this project. If we were to understand our users, we would have to understand their condition. So, I initiated scientific research of peer-reviewed articles.
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I divided up the team and delegated various research topics for the team to research. After an hour, we presented our findings to one another. This optimized research output by having each member focus on a specific aspect to research, instead of a general overview.
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With our newly acquired grasp of osteoporosis, I sought to grasp how this disease affects users firsthand. I interviewed 6 users.
The research prior to the user interviews proved to be very beneficial. As we conducted user interviews, we were able to understand the medical jargon our users used, while being able to understand how their disease directly affects/causes their problems.
User Interviews
03. Data Synthesis​
Affinity Mapping
Osteoporosis is a debilitating disease that drastically changes the lives of those affected. Understandably, there were a plethora of various pain points and issues. I managed to group the findings into a myriad of different insights. There were too many insights to address in our MVP, so I prioritized the 3 most common and important issues.
I synthesized the data and identified 3 themes:
#1
Patients find it difficult to maintain a lifestyle to accommodate osteoporosis
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This is a life-changing condition that requires frequent medications and injections, new diets, and exercises to maintain mobility. These might have been aspects that they had never had to consider pre-diagnosis, so having to manage all of these new changes was overwhelming
#2
Osteoporosis changes their mental state.
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Although some users were determined to not let their condition define them, many lost confidence in themselves, felt depressed, viewed themselves as less capable and felt restricted in what activities they could do. Some even had to give up hobbies that they enjoyed
#3
Users, despite being older, use technology
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Every user we interviewed stated that they currently use technology, especially iPhones.
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iPhones are easy for users since they are light and portable.
04. Narrowing the Scope
Now that I understood the major pain points of patients with osteoporosis, I narrowed our scope by redefining our HMW statement. According to the interviews, users weren't worried about injury. Despite being more prone
How might we reimagine older adults’ care experience after breaking a bone due to osteoporosis to ensure their first fracture is their last?
to injury, injury was rare and didn't require much thought. They were moreso concerned with their medication and finding more manageable ways to fit enjoyable exercise and nutrition into their day to day life.
How might we provide osteoporosis patients with the necessary tools to manage their new life so that adapting to their new way of living is easy and less overwhelming?
To narrow my scope even further and to design with intention, I created a user persona. Designing for Ophelia, our user persona, would allow us to address problems that a wide scope of our users had.
User Persona
05. Understanding the Market
Competitive/Comparative Feature Analysis
Now that I had an idea of which pain points we wanted to address in my application, I conducted a feature analysis of 3 competitors and 2 comparators in order to understand the market.
Competitors
My Osteoporosis Manager App
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Medication and prescription refill manager specifically for osteoporosis patients
Mango Health
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An overall wellness app that also motivates users to eat well and exercise
BOOST Thyroid
A "companion app" for patients with hypothyroidism. Has a focus on the medicinal aspect
Comparators
Fooducate
Diet and nutrition app aimed to help users keep track of their dietary goals
Medisafe
Focused solely on medicine reminders and the ability to communicate with providers
Ultimately, I found that there is no application that completely manages an osteoporosis patient’s new life after diagnosis. This gap in the market really motivated and inspired me and my team to create an app that could provide assistance to all aspects of this disease.
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With an even narrower scope of our application, I had one last step of research to conduct before I sketched our wireframes. I conducted a card sort with different categories and features that we wanted to include in our
app. I asked 8 potential users to sort the cards together to enhance my understanding of how to organize navigational hierarchy.
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At this point we conducted research regarding our users, target disease, and market; we narrowed our scopes; and we established our navigational hierarchy. We were finally ready to start the design phase.
06. From Design Studio to Mid-Fi Wireframes
Now that we understood what pain points to address, what our competitors and comparators have implemented to succeed, and navigational hierarchy, we began to brainstorm ideas for our application. With access to three minds on my team with different ideas, I
initiated a Design Studio session to foster creativity. First, we sketched wireframes for our app individually.
Then, we presented our ideas to each other and decided as a team which features to include.
We all had different ideas in mind, so implementing a design studio really allowed us to explore a wider range of possibilities. I envisioned a home page that shows all of the most important features found through our user interviews, such as their schedule. I also wanted a fun way for users to keep track of their mental wellbeing. Taking inspiration from bullet journals, I suggested a mood tracker that would populate the page each day.
Now that we had an understanding of which features to include, we created potential pathways that users could take to get to different desired outcomes. Our user flow allowed us to view how a user might navigate through our app, and offered early awareness of any potential problems.
As a team, we discussed various features and ways to implement solutions. We chose a general direction to head towards and created a Low-Fidelity Prototype to achieve user feedback.
Low-Fidelity Prototype
07. Testing
Using our prototype, I performed a usability test to see if our idea made sense to users. We wanted to make sure that we were on the right track before spending our efforts creating a high-fidelity prototype. Measuring users' performances would allow me to understand any issues and confusions they may have with the app, and reveal areas to improve.
I asked 8 users to complete four tasks. Then, I compiled a scorecard to consolidate our findings:
I found that our users were satisfied with our application overall. The average time to complete was fast, but the results were inconsistent. Moving on to our high-fidelity prototype, I aimed to improve these inconsistencies to decrease the average time to complete tasks by
our designs. Since my users had trouble locating certain buttons, I made icons bigger.
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I iterated on my designs and moved on to create a high-fidelity prototype on Figma.
08. High-Fidelity Prototype
Onboarding
Users will be instructed to download and set up the app at their doctor's appointment. Most of our users won't be the most tech-savvy since osteoporosis develops later in life, so having their trusted doctor guide them would be incredibly helpful.
Here they will create their profile and add their patient information. They can then customize their preferences by adjusting their needs, which will be used to tailor recipes and exercises shown to the user (shown later).
Home Page
The Home Page serves as an easy way for patients to view their most important aspects. They can view and keep track of deadlines and reminders, note how they feel, and find information on maintaining a healthy lifestyle with osteoporosis.
Full Schedule
Viewing Full Schedule from the home page takes users to a more in-depth look at their day. A calendar at the top allows users to look at their past and even edit a future schedule.
Users can also view and customize their meal and exercise plans.
Doctor Notes
Throughout the app, users can find notes from their providers' in case they need a reminder as to what their recommended plan is.
Additionally, patients may want to change their plan or medication, and a reminder from their trusted provider can offer them the autonomy to do so within their recommended treatment.
Nutrition
A nutritional diet is essential for osteoporosis patients. Here, users can manage their diet and find new recipes to stay healthy.
A pain point among users was the inability to find delicious recipes that met their nutrition goals. Users will be able to browse various recipes, view pictures, and add them to their daily menu.
OsteoCare will also check if any of the users' food preferences/limitations interfere with the recipe.
Exercise
Another important facet that OsteoCare manages is exercise. Here, users can set reminders and keep track of exercise routines.
Similarly to recipes, users can browse the app to find new ways to exercise, along with detailed professional instruction.
OsteoCare will also check if any of the users' physical limitations interfere with the exercise.
Medication
Medicine is incredibly important, but many users found it difficult to manage the various medicine they needed to take every day.
With OsteoCare, users can view their recommended medicine, along with a CTA to call their provider if they need professional clarification.
Wellness Journal
Mental health changes were very common according to our research. In the Wellness Journal, users may record how they feel, what they did on a day, and record vitals.
Here, users can keep track of their mental state. As users add their moods each day, their Mood Tracker fills to creates a fun and artistic way to keep track of their mental health. This also allows providers to easily check on their patients' mental health.
About Osteoporosis
According to interviews, users felt frustrated by the lack of osteoporosis resources before and after diagnosis. Overall, they want more information regarding their condition, along with links to educate others.
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In the About Osteoporosis tab, users can view everything they need to know about osteoporosis including its history, causes, and symptoms. Clicking on Learn More will grant access to additional medical articles and journals.
09. Future Steps
1. Along with our new iteration, I need to conduct more usability testing to continue design iterations.
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2. Conduct more research on the application from the doctor’s perspective.
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3. Research and design an incentive feature so that users feel more compelled to keep track of their health.
4. Research more ways for doctors to have more streamlined communication with their patients.
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5. Conduct more research to gauge interest in a social media aspect, to find a community with others suffering from osteoporosis.
10. Conclusion
Building OsteoCare was an incredibly fun and educational experience. Being the only team member with research experience, I was able to utilize my leadership and healthcare background to educate my team members on how to properly conduct medical and UX research. This created a solid base of knowledge for us to build our designs.
I also put my collaboration and teamwork skills to the test. Although team settings and adapting to new work styles are familiar to me, this was my first time on a team in the UX sphere. I learned how to work with new UX designers, understand each others' strengths and weaknesses, and delegate tasks to submit designs in a short time period.
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