HerWay: Designing a quick and efficient approach to food logging for pregnant mothers who have gestational diabetes.
Goal :
To design an app that helps pregnant mothers with gestational diabetes log their food and vitals in a fun, engaging and easy way.
Role:
UX Researcher
Duration:
24 hrs (UX Result Hackathon)
Background
UXResults is a hackathon event led by Vlad Korobov, a Senior UX Designer in the Washington DC area. Due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, the hackathon was virtual and entirely remote. This opened up registration globally (as long as one member from each team was an U.S. resident, anyone could join in.)
The event hosted more than 600 participants who were grouped into 140 teams of 3-5 members each. Ten companies submitted challenges for the teams to solve in 24 hours. The teams could select more than one challenge to complete in the same time frame. Companies that sponsored the event provided prizes for the hackathon. Some of them included AdobeXD, Zeitcaster, Leverege, BenTen Technologies, Sketch, UXPressia, Icons8, Tilda Publishing, ADPList, and Library of Congress.
Challenge
BenTen Technologies is a company located in Manassas, Virginia. They offer services like consulting, application development, research and Q.A. For the UXResult Hackathon they challenged the teams to “Design a quick and efficient approach to food logging for pregnant mothers who have gestational diabetes.” They also asked us to find ways to increase motivation and engagement with the product: moms-to-be diagnosed with G.D must log their meals everyday for 3 months, so the solution needed to be fun and easy.
My team and I selected their challenge because we are all women and we wanted to create something that would have a positive impact on women whose lives changed so drastically when they were going through so many changes already.
Before the start: Get Organized!
It’s important to have a well-balanced team. The benefit of working on a small team is the ability to be agile, and leverage the strengths of each individual. The week leading up to the competition, we scheduled meetings for introductions, and any house keeping items we could get out of the way. The evening before, my team member, Tessrah time-blocked each section of work that needed to get done on Google Calendar. This gave the team a good estimation on how to work, and who would lead each section. It also helped us reach our goal of completing the challenge within the time frame: each team member knew what they should be doing as an individual contributor.
Research
Competitive Analysis Research
Jess and I handled the competitive analysis. We looked at health related apps that monitored nutritional value, calories, or food/medication logging. We decided to analyze the features, strengths and weaknesses of each competitor. Time constraint played a role in not being able to complete a whole SWOT analysis. We had to strategize and choose what would be beneficial for the task at hand: designing a food log app for moms with gestational diabetes.
User Interviews
Tessrah and I reached out and scheduled phone calls prior to the start of the event recognizing we’d only had 24 hours to complete the challenge. We had a brainstorming session where we jotted down questions to ask during the interviews, too.
We knew we had a problem: we did not know many women that had been diagnosed with gestational diabetes. We had to compromise… We interviewed a total of 5 individuals who had recently been pregnant, those with gestational diabetes, and people with diabetes.
Internet Research: Being resourceful!
As a UX Designer I always seek to dictate any design decisions in the development process with the end user in mind. I knew my knowledge and empathy towards the end user was lacking due to us not finding enough interviewees who met the criteria of being pregnant and diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes.
I decided a good way to find more information would be to read blogs written by pregnant ladies who had been diagnosed with G.D, watch youtube videos and read reddit posts. This research data ended up being key in our whole design process, and along with data from interviews helped us create Hera, our persona.
Storyboard
I was tasked with creating a storyboard that would help the team visualize Hera’s journey, her goals, pain points and needs. This artefact helped us empathize with our end users better and define the features we included in the final product.
The Final Product
Our wonderful UI designer, Tess built these screens using a UI Kit on Adobe XD.
I stepped in to assist her as we were running out of time. She also created a hero image and colour palette that is echoed throughout the UI.
Introducing HerWay App
