Holly Haughian

I’ve moved my research blog over to Notion! Find the link below:

Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send.

Postel’s Law was formulated by Jon Postel, an early pioneer of the Internet. The Law is a design guideline for software, specifically in regards to TCP and networks. It's message is that programs that send messages to other machines (or to other programs on the same machine) should conform completely to the specifications, but programs that receive messages should accept non-conformant input as long as the meaning is clear.

Conservative in design: Make the outcome as reliable as possible, needs to be as usable for the largest amount of people as it can.

Liberal in design: Means the acceptance of input from users e.g. data entered from keyboard, is it gesture controlled, consider gestures for a watch interface.

Consider the various actions the user could take or any input they might provide, anticipate virtually anything in terms of input, access and capability while providing a reliable and accessible interface.

Paul gave us a worksheet from DesignKit’s website, it’s a design challenge that articulate the problem you are trying to solve, and helps you define a scope that is neither too narrow nor too broad.

We discussed what to include on this on our group call then I went and filled it out. 

https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lW9SPY8=/

Our group met on zoom and we talked about where we’re going with group research, the end product is done individually but for the research we’re all focusing on the same area. Below is a write up I done of the meeting.

Talked about:

Area of healthcare we're going to cover

ideas for research

filled out the design challenge

Focus Group: Elderly

The focus group of our digital product will be the elderly. We thought there was good room for UX and design to improve the quality of healthcare they receive and potentially improve their overall health and daily lives. We brainstormed possible product ideas such as an app to help elderly users connect with others, help to keep them active and monitor their daily activities.

Research plan:

For the research were going to carry out primary research by speaking to grandparents/ neighbours over the phone (as we cant visit due to COVID-19)

As well as all carrying out secondary research and study the work of others/ products already out there and take a note of what they've done & how, and what lessons they learned.

Book to look at : Design for Health - https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ulster/reader.action?docID=4862641

Side notes:

Research average age of care home users

Look into routine apps, as well as the IDEO calendar for inspiration

Content

Doximity is designed for healthcare professionals, I've previously looked at apps designed for the patient so it's good seeing both aspects. It helps over 1 million healthcare professionals take the friction out of everyday challenges that are unique to clinicians. The tools they already use, conveniently in one place and designed to make their life a little bit easier. There's a social newsfeed feature based around medicine, where users can read blogs or posts from other healthcare professionals and connect with each other.

Another great feature is one-click patient video calls, which is a secure telemedicine solution for both the professional and the patient. The healthcare professional starts a call then the patient receives a text to join, which it a lot easier and simpler than meeting in person, while still maintaining the human interaction element of being able to see each-other through video. Users can also search and find any other physician in the country (U.S.). They can sign, date and annotate documents through the app which is very helpful, as opposed to using paper and spending time posting it out/printing, it saves both time and money.

Design

I found the design of the app similar to that of LinkedIn or Facebook, in the way users scroll through a feed and can comment or like it. I think the overall design could potentially be overwhelming for a user as there's a lot of content on the one screen, if the content was organised more or laid out more clearly this could be avoided. They've used little colour which is good as for a health app less is more in terms of colour. I also found the content on the Dialler screen confusing, there's a lot of buttons and options for the user.

Language

The language is professional which suits the intended audience, the vast amount of information and language used shows  people who are using the app would have experience knowing the jargon.

What's Good About it?

Theres a lot of helpful features for healthcare professionals on the app, the ability to ring their patients with ease is a lot more practical than in person visits, it would allow more time for other tasks to be done as well. The navigation is simple too, even though there's a lot of content on the screens, it is quite accessible which is good.

What Could Be Improved On?

Content

The Pharmawise app uses AI to enhance Medication Adherence and generate insights for Big Pharma. They wanted to create an experience where the medication is intelligent. The mobile app is designed to amplify patient engagement in a humanised way. It offers a conversational experience to help users manage medication. It also helps them understand the medication and the reasons for taking them. Engaging with patients using natural language can positively impact their behaviour and therefore seemed to be more effective than the costly technological solutions that exists today.

Through the app users can scan medication and get information such as time to take it, dosage, side effects and how effective it is. By using Machine Learning algorithms the app can generate insights into decision making, it assists the user with hints and suggestions that could essentially lower the mental load needed for managing medication e.g. by telling them they've already taken medication, when they're about to run out and order more etc.

The app also features a chat bot where the user can input side effects, how they're feeling etc and they're replied to with an answer, I'd like to incorporate a chat bot into my product to help the user feel in control and gain any insights needed.

Design

I love this app's design, its minimalistic and simple, only using the necessary content for the user, this avoids overwhelming the user and pushing them away. They've used clean typography and a very minimal colour scheme, with icons containing 1 or 2 colours. This interfaces of the app are fun and light, this provides a calming experience for the user when learning more about their medication and needs.

Language

The voice and tone is friendly and welcoming, by using phrases such as those in the picture above, it adds a fun experience for the user, subtle word choices like this can have a big impact on the user experience.

What's Good About it?

I love the features of this app, the fact it could lower the mental load needed for managing medication is a big help for a lot of people. I think there are many helpful features such as reminders for medication, tracking the last time the user took medication etc. All of these would make the user's life easier.

The UI is great, it's simple and easy to follow, the user isn't overloaded with information and would find using the app enjoyable. I'm going to use this colour scheme as inspiration for my app, as I think health related apps should be quite simple and use calming colour tones to avoid overwhelming the user.

What Could Be Improved On?

I got out the trusty sticky notes to explore the different areas of healthcare that I could create my product for. I listed their age, access to technology, ability to use technology and how UX can improve their healthcare. We're having a group call to figure out which area to focus on soon, so doing this could give a bit of direction.

Paul mentioned the term MVP in class, I heard about it last semester but needed to refresh my memory on the concept.

A minimum viable product (MVP) is the smallest and simplest version of your product or service that can provide value to your users.

In a PDF I read recently it discussed MVPs. Prototypes and MVPs allow you to focus on learning as much as possible, as efficiently as possible. Building and testing these can help us obtain data, feedback and validation from real users. By validating a version of the product as early as possible, the risk associated with building a product is significantly reduced.

The steps in creating one are:

Identify assumptions and unknowns.

Build your product in a very lightweight form.

I found this ebook on designing for health, there's a lot of great insights throughout but I focused on the topic of "Behaviour-change interventions for public health". I've discussed in a previous post that I'm thinking of designing a product for the patient so this section was very helpful. It focused on the design of interventions to change health-related behaviours.

Changing the public's behaviours could extend life and enhance the quality of living, the report contains statistics about the public's health and what interventions are in place to tackle health related problems.

There are many determinants of health-related behaviour patterns, individual behaviour must be understood in connection to cultural, legislative and economic contexts. When designing my product, I need to consider all areas of my users lives to avoid exclusion.

Intervention Mapping

This intervention mapping framework provides a guide to optimal design and evaluation procedures, it involves:

A needs assessment

Identify underlying mechanisms of change

Identify relevant theoretical models and evidence-based change techniques

Create the programme materials

Implementation planning takes place

https://hanno.co/media/wp/hanno-health-innovation-whitepaper.pdf

This is such a good resource with loads of helpful insights, there’s a lot covered such as case studies, MVPs and how to make them etc. I’ll refer back to it when I start building my product.

I read this article on the journey of UX in healthcare, Chris Kliess identified and discussed the emerging areas of growth in healthcare design. I made notes on what I learnt from it below.

A point that stood out to me was "What about the Patient". Chris talked about how it rare for a designer to have the opportunity to directly design a patient experience. This made me think more into basing my project around the patient, and how to make their healthcare experience easier/better. 

I've been thinking about the different possible groups to design for and I've been leaning towards designing a digital product for the elderly, I know from having grandparents they use health services quite regularly, whether it be ordering a prescription or getting a checkup, so this inspired me to go down this route and explore how UX can improve the delivery of their healthcare.

In class we looked at the Peek app designed by Amid Moradganjeh, who previously worked at IDEO, Google and a lot of other big companies. We only looked at the calendar which I'm going to talk about, but I had a look at Amid's website and it's so interesting, he’s worked on a lot of great products as well as writing his own book (which I need).

He's advertised the app as "The Calendar Humanised, Re-defining the calendar experience for casual users", without seeing the app I'm already interested in the product purely from the headline.

I love the simplistic design and playful colour scheme of Peek, and there are gesture based interactions in the app which add excitement to using it.

Amid showed the process he took in designing Peek, it was so interesting seeing the trial and error of screens and how he came refining them and getting the finished design. Sometimes I'd think "I'm not going to show that in my case study/it looks messy on paper" but this is what people want to see, I really enjoyed seeing the initial sketches and screens of Peek as it shows the true process.

The lesson learned here is that even though something may already be designed and created, this doesn't mean I cant redesign it and make improvements on it. This is particularly helpful when it comes to designing for health, as there are already a lot of health apps/ products out there, but they mightn't be best designed for the users.

Amid also produced an app for "Re-defining Medication Experience" which I'm excited to look into.

This week we had a look at research techniques, including qualitative, quantitate, observational and attitudinal methods.

Paul showed us the calendar app called Peek, which was designed by an ex-IDEO designer, they took something that was already invented and designed, and redesigned it in a more user friendly way. This shows me that even if somethings already made and used, it doesn't mean I can't redesign it and improve on it. Below are some notes I made in class.

Needs Driven Design

Ask yourself:

Does it need to exist

What needs are you solving

What user goals are you helping to solve

"It's never too early to involve users and test your assumptions. The later you leave use research the more expensive it is to fix the things you've built."

Anytime I've ordered delivered food in Belfast, I would use Delivaroo, for no particular reason other than it's the one I have downloaded on my phone.

Recently I downloaded Uber Eats after seeing an advertisement and immediately enjoyed using the app more. Majority of the time I would walk to the takeaway as they're a 2 minute walk away, but the pleasent UI of Uber Eats would tempt anyone to deliver off the app.

Both apps have a similar user experience in that you select a restaurant, select your food and place your order. They both have similar features too, restaurant menus are organised the same which avoids confusion. However Uber Eats UI stands out a lot more, the highlight key words so we understand the information better, use lovely illustration icons instead of photos and their colour scheme is professional and classy. Whereas Delivaroo’s home screen seems messy and could turn someone away by not having a clear structure.

This helps give me ideas for designing the health app, even though these food delivery apps are completely unrelated to health, the design and tricks I learned from analysing them can be applied.

Delivaroo’s UI

Uber Eat’s UI

I attended a brilliant UX design talk recently by Behrad Mirafshar, where he discussed his tried and tested process to design digital products from a validated solution to pixel-perfect design.

I found it very insightful as he discussed user flows, wire-framing, MVP (which we've discussed in class), interactive elements and more. There was tonnes of great advice and lessons learned.

I seen these ticket illustrations on the article “My Favourite Fonts of 2020″, which put an idea in my head for the “On The Silver Screen” page, I could recreate these and have the movie title listed on them, as they’ll reflect the olden style theme.