Daily Check-in
Users are allowed to check in on their mood, activities to keep track of the daily record.
Log Alpha-Stim Sessions
User can log in their feeling for each session to keep track of the behavior of the product and pain change overtime.
Progress Analytics
The progress of the sessions, mood, and activities are designed to provide overview of changes for individual one and overtime.
Take Assessment
Features designed to encourage users to provide feedback on products and how they work on their pain points.
Alpha-Stim is an electrotherapy device prescribed around the world by physicians and other healthcare professionals to effectively treat anxiety, insomnia, depression, along with acute, chronic, and post-traumatic pain.
The sales of the product is declining in 2021. The AS team was having hard time to use the existing database to identify the areas to improve. The executive board made a decision in early 2022 to develop a mobile application that is accompany with the product to fill the gap and hopefully inform how to improve the products.
Goals
Balancing business goals and user goals.
The key thing for this application design is to find out current problems that users have, in order to design an application that would meet both business and users' goals.
With the high-level direction, the design lead and I laid out the plan for the user research to further identify the problems and user needs building upon what Alpha-stim wants to achieve.
User survey
The reason why choose to do user survey is because the design will be very data and user engaging focus. We wanted to get more quantitative data for the decision making. We sent out surveys with $5 reward to over 200 users and received 63 responses. Below are the results of some key questions:
What would encourage you to take product surveys?
What are the expectations for the products?
What motivates you to use the application, if developed?
What prevents you from using the application, if developed?
Problem Statement 1:
Users don't have a place to log the data to measure the effectiveness of the product.
Problem Statement 2:
Users are unable to evaluate overall health in addition to the health improvement from using the product.
Problem Statement 3:
Users can't track results and see overtime changes in physical conditions.
Site Map
The application map was created to understand the overall flow of the application and also to understand more from the data perspective - which part provides data and which part collects. This helps data scientists build the data model and pipelines for data collections and services - which is mainly why MDS got brought on.
Screens for General APP Functions
These screens are part of core functionalities that are necessary for an application to work.
Screens to Collect Data from Users
These screens center on functionalities were the user is asked to provide EPII with data about themselves, their stimulation sessions and how they are doing.
Screens to Display Data to Users
These screens center on functionalities to show users their progress and how they are doing. Almost all of these screens are data visualizations / charts.
Problem 1:
Users can't track results and see overtime changes in physical conditions.
Solution:
Use the data logged in by users to provide them with an overview and overtime changes.
Users can log sessions for different use purposes - anxiety, depression, or others, pain, and insomia
Users are allowed to rate the overall state before and after using the product for each session.
Problem 2:
Users are unable to evaluate overall health in addition to the health improvement from using the product.
Solution:
Develop matrix to measure other factors contributing to health to help users monitor their overall health condition.
A follow up questions were sent to the users who took the first survey and mentioned overall health in the comment sections. we received 68% respondences. Among received answers, we identified two factors that users consider as key for their overall health apart from the product treatment: Activities and Mood.
Users are allowed to do daily checkin for different health elements such as sleep, self care to better monitor their overall health.
Problem 3:
Users don't have a place to log the data to measure the effectiveness of the product.
Solution:
Track data logged by users and provide an overview of overtime changes and trends.
Users can view the overtime changes of the session they login in different timeframes and different views. Users can also unlock trends of the logged sessions.
Apart from product sessions, users are also allowed to review the overtime changes in their overall health conditions - with the daily checkin data.
I worked closely with the data team and design lead on different data visualization to make data more interpretive and intuitive.
The testing was conducted among 10 people. Users were asked to complete 3 tasks and review ALL screens.
The design is well received in general. 86% of users were able to complete the tasks given to them without having any barriers.
10 people were guided to download the application and completing tasks. Users shared screens during the whole session. I was able to observe and ask questions while they were completing tasks.
After completing tasks, users were asked to review each screen and finish the questions for each screen, including multi-choice questions and open-ended questions (what can be improved for example).
Landing Screen
7/10 participants mentioned that the analytics were the most interesting part and 5/10 commented it would be nice to see major analytics when they land on the application.
The design team explored multiple design layouts and patterns. The design iterates from four equal entry points to four entry points but with progress analytics as focus.
The design changes was to put emphasis on logged user data to capture user eyes and encourages users to engage more with the app.
Log Sessions
The design for log sessions started with card format including session details and buttons for view and edit.
During the usability testing, users found it very difficult to recognize key information and take action actions from there.
In the design iteration, we changed the card format to column view to provide more overview feeling to users and let users to view and edit session when they get into session detail screen.
Select Pain Points
The pain point selection screen was to allow users to report their pain areas when using the product and logging a session.
The main challenge here is how to make the selection easier for users. The design started with points highlighted on a body. However, users found it difficult to select during the testing sessions.
In the final design, we changed the selection from points to buttons to provide users with smother selections.
Balancing the good user experience and meeting the business goals is the most challenging part. How can we engage users to use the application so that the company can collect the data for analytics is the whole spectrum of the product. I did find the user research and usability testing part is really useful in uncovering what user really need from this product. In design, the exploration of different visualizations to better communicate with users also helped me learn a lot.