Aria, the children's app for Asthma management
Aria is a friendly mobile Android app designed to help children set goals to manage and reduce their asthma symptoms while monitoring their progress.
According to the CDC, Asthma affects over 25 million adults and children in the U.S. and is responsible for 1.8 million emergency care. There is no permanent cure for asthma, but its symptoms can be managed and controlled with adherence to a proper treatment plan, changes in lifestyle and, taking necessary precautions through self-management practices.
Research Goals & Findings
Understand how patients manage their asthma on a daily basis.
Identify symptoms that are hard to manage and what causes them to trigger and when.
Learn about the resources patients use to learn about their condition
Discover health apps that are currently in the asthma management space.
Competitive analysis
Research current asthma report and technology related to Asthma control and maintenance.
User interviews
To attain insights into the lifestyle of asthma patients, their methods to manage symptoms and any challenges they face to live a normal life.
“It took me years of hospital visits to be very aware of my body’s triggers and my limits.
”
From the research, I learned that in order to keep asthma symptoms controlled it is important for the patient to learn about the body's behavior around certain factors and learn how to develop a sustainable self-management practice.
Persona Development
From my research findings, I identified two personas - a child that suffers from asthma and the caretaker of an asthma patient. I created profiles and empathy maps based on collective analysis from user interviews and secondary research data.
User Journey
I built a customer journey map depicting Daniel's (primary persona) typical experience to align the product services with business goals. This helped define each stage of Daniel's decision-making process including his goals, expectations, actions, emotional level, and touchpoints with the brand.
Design Thinking
This approach helps ideate a minimal viable product and its features to test for future iterations.
Strategy Blueprint
Once I defined the problems that needed to be resolved, I set out to establish the premise of the project by creating a user experience strategy map to define the guiding principles, challenges, aspiration, focus areas, activities and measurements for success.
IDeation
Sitemap
Before moving into interaction design, I created an application sitemap with the high priority features for the main task flows.
Sketches
Assembling the application map guided what key pages and features to design for during user testing. I began by fleshing out my ideas through rough, disposable sketches.
Wireframes
From my sketches, I moved on to mid-fidelity wire-frames. I referenced Google's Material Design, as I considered how to pull from them while also adapting them as needed to fit my content and target persona.
Branding & UI Kit
Once the initial wireframes were ready for initial prototyping I started to work on creating a brand identity for Aria.
Aria’s wordmark includes a flat-designed bee trailing off from the word mark. The bee embodies the dependence of nature, care, and attention in order to have a stable and enjoyable life. The bee, Aria, is incorporated throughout the app as the child's companion and sidekick.
I also created a UI Kit inspired by Google's Material guidelines to align with the style of the apps found in the Google Play store.
High-fidelity screens
I created a working high fidelity prototype of the designed screens using Invision. The task flows observed in the prototype include:
Goal-setting
Symptom input
Adding new medication
Taking medication
Action Plan
TESTING
Usability Testing & Affinity Map
I conducted usability testing to evaluate ease of navigation, usability and comprehension on the call-to-actions and content. The affinity map identifies the areas where the participants met my expectations and where there was confusions. Based on the feedback and observations I have listed recommendations to improve the designs.
Final remarks
The recommendations from the usability test suggests to consider additional educational content and to develop screens for secondary target persona; the caretaker. I enjoyed designing and researching Aria because I gained an understanding on the value of designing for delight so that children can be kept engaged.