INNOVATING MATERNITY CARE
iOS App Design
Carina Health. Care, Together
In my team of five, I designed an iOS app for our client Carina Health, to help patients who share a similar health condition, receive care in a group setting and follow a care plan from their provider, create social connections and keep them engaged with their care.
PROJECT SNAPSHOT
Carina Health is a Business to Business to Consumer, SaaS startup that aims to provide services to both healthcare providers and patients, by allowing providers to create cohorts of patients sharing the same health condition to dispense care more efficiently and free up time for physicians.
Patients enjoy more 1:1 availability from their provider, receive better, more affordable care in a group setting and join a community that will support and care for each other, helping stay on track with their care.
My Role: Product Designer
Duration: 3 Week Sprint
Project Status: Complete 2/2/24
Method Used: Business Analysis, Competitive & Comparative Feature Analysis, Affinity Mapping, User Persona, User Journey, Feature Prioritization, Sketching & Design Studio, Prototyping, Usability Testing.
Tools: Figma, Notion, Zoom, Google Docs/Sheet/Survey/Forms, Slack, Keynote.
THE PUZZLE
In our journey with Carina Health, the company's founder set the stage by prioritizing the provider's perspective—our clients who offer the service.
This strategic choice allowed our team to delve deep into the patient's world, focusing on understanding their unique needs and figuring out innovative ways to maintain their engagement.
We were tasked with unraveling the intricate puzzle of patient-provider interactions, aiming to bridge gaps in communication and enhance the overall healthcare experience.
The client was in search of:
A deeper comprehension of patient needs, emphasizing personalized care and sustained engagement strategies.
A well-defined prototype for MVP development, crafted to test the waters in real-world scenarios and pave the way for a successful commercial launch.
THE FINAL PICTURE
In crafting the solution for Carina Health, our team synthesized findings from extensive user research to deliver a feature-rich application meticulously tailored to both patient and provider needs.
Our development journey led us to a trio of core functionalities designed to revolutionize patient engagement and streamline care delivery:
By integrating these features, we not only addressed the direct needs uncovered during our user research—such as the demand for a more connected and engaging healthcare experience—but also aligned with the business objectives of increasing patient engagement and retention.
OUR IMPACT
Carina Health's application has significantly transformed patient engagement and streamlined care management.
Tasks are now completed 11.8 seconds faster
An average gain of +20% in efficiency
Users found our app easy to use with an easiness rating of 4.7/5
These advancements reflect our dual focus on enhancing user experience and meeting key business objectives, affirming our commitment to a future where technology and healthcare intersect seamlessly.
HOW WE GOT THERE?
You'll have to keep reading below🙂
OUR METHODOLOGY
Evaluation
Implementation
EXPLORATION
We believed that
Users in group treatment programs need a platform to track and manage their treatment goals, give and receive peer support, and stay motivated with health behavioral changes.
So we wondered
How might we assist patients in medical group care feel supported by their community and engaged in their personal wellbeing and health?
We listened
Through 11 insightful interviews with mothers who navigated group healthcare during their pregnancies, we sought to tap into the lived experiences and genuine needs of our target users.
Despite our client's broader vision for vertical agnosticism, a deliberate focus on maternity care illuminated the pathway to validating Carina Health's fundamental proposition: the transformative potential of a group health setting.
This listening phase was critical for more than just confirming our preliminary hypotheses; it enabled us to rigorously evaluate the appeal and functionality of proposed features, including gamification techniques designed to captivate patients, foster community bonds, and inspire lasting behavioral health transformations.
We heard
ANALYSIS
We learned
By synthesizing our interviews via affinity mapping and were able to confirm our hypothesis, as well as key insights that informed our design decisions:
WHO ARE WE DESIGNING FOR
Based on our findings, we created a persona to reflect our target audience and help personify the data collected to based our design decisions on.
Meet Audrey!
Audrey's persona reveals the challenges first-time expecting mothers face: the need for community, guidance, and centralized information. She represents users seeking a social support network and easy access to reliable pregnancy and childbirth resources.
Audrey's Journey
We noted a few valuable opportunities:
Provide group support in chat moderated by medical professional.
To address patients online searches and misinformation in unmoderated private groups.
Postpartum comes with a lot of unknowns, we can offer guidance through curated resources and support from the group.
Remind patients of upcoming appointments, prepare their questions and required information with the help of the group.
During her whole experience, feelings of isolation can be present as well as a lack of connection with people who can relate. Offering in person events and meetups would greatly help.
IDEATION
Feature Prioritization
Through feature prioritization matrix, we selected features that we believed would have to ship with this minimum viable product. This included the features that the design team came up with as well as the ones provided by the client.
Out of about 40 features, we selected to include the following in our prototype:
• Group Chat
• Feed
• Push Notifications & Reminders
• Report Users
• Streaks
• Send Virtual Cheer
• Profile (Login/Sign Up)
• Events & Meet-Ups
• Group Goals
• Task Checklist
• Polls
• Quizzes
• Onboarding
• Wearables Integration
• Vitals Tracking
• Voting/Emotes
• Badges
• Provider POC
Carina Health v0.0.1
Starting with a deep understanding of our audience and business objectives, we launched into the design process.
By sketching and iterating, we honed our vision for the app's architecture, focusing on feature layout, page connections, and user navigation.
This iterative approach led us to an application structure that aligns with both user expectations and business goals.
EVALUATION
Testing our design
RSVP TO AN EVENT
•Changed section label for added clarity.
•Added ”Events” in navigation as a standalone page.
-9s ▲
Avg. Time
+50% ▲
Avg. Success
COLLECTIVE GOAL
•Tab navigation and pull down menu removed.
•Navigation label and icon change to ”Chat”.
•Progress bar size increased, chevron added for navigation.
-10s ▲
Avg. Time
CHEER A PEER
•Increased text size for body and username.
•Added reaction icon.
-15s ▲
Avg. Time
+20% ▲
Avg. Success
Bringing our sketches to life by converting it to a clickable Figma prototype in mid fidelity, we tested our design by giving five participants, six tasks to perform with our prototype designed to highlight any issues with our information architecture and design.
We repeated this process with our high fidelity design after implementing the changes learned from initial testing.
Here is what we've learned:
IMPLEMENTATION
Our vision for the Carina Health experience
ADDITIONAL FEATURES
TOP CONTRIBUTOR
Feature aimed at reenforcing positive social behaviors by providing a unique profile picture frame and profile for top contributors who regularly receive upvotes on their answers in chat.
PROVIDER PROFILE
One of the key way for the patient to quickly get in touch with their provider, straight from the provider/moderator profile in chat.
ALIAS
During user research, the willingness to share personal information greatly varied, by allowing the user to choose what name to share, this allows more control and flexibility to the user.
Carina Health V.2
What is next for Carina Health? I have a few recommendations that I would have loved to have the time to implement and work on.
Design
Onboarding: Most users skipped permissions screen. It would be a better use of their time to prompt them when the application uses the corresponding function, and use onboarding to familiarize users to the application's core features and mechanics.
Status Feedback: For Events as well as Programs by highlighting what is a past item, current or future one.
Group Goal: Did not perform well during usability testing despite changes on how to access it and requires to be duplicated or moved to a different page.
Chat: To my surprise the mechanic of clicking on a chat bubble to react is not an established mental model yet, an icon should be placed near chat bubbles to signify more options are available.
Research
Gamification: User research should be conducted to identify type of players, what additional gamification elements can be introduced in which group setting.
Healthcare Providers: Interviews should be conducted to better understand this second and equally important facet of this service and identify their needs and pain points.
KPIs
Task Completion: Percentage of patient completing tasks offered by their provider.
Program Completion: Percentage of patients who completed their program.
NPS: Net promoter score to track overall satisfaction with the service.
Last Thought
This design sprint was a great experience as I was unfamiliar with this space from a business and human perspective. Our research truly helped me understand and empathize with the patients and convinced me on the value of Carina Health's mission and its founder's vision.
It also highlighted that this is a sizable project and I just scratched the surface, I'm excited to see how this design will develop and the impact it will have on patients.