Part 1: Design Brief and Research
About the Project
SoloHealth is an app created to help single parents navigate their childs health as they grow. This app aims to provide a comprehensive and user-friendly digital platform for single parents to manage and track the health records of their children.
The Problem
Raising a child is really difficult, but raising a child alone causes an enormous amount of stress and responsibility. Growing up in a single parent household myself, I have firsthand experience of the amount of work it takes to raise a child with no support. With having to juggle multiple responsibilities, my mom really struggled with managing our health. Unfortunately, this is not a single experience and many other families struggle with this as well.
The Solution
The goal is to create an app that will ease the stress of managing health records for single parents. This app will provide the neccessary resources to streamline the process of maintaining medical information, appointments, and vaccination records, ensuring that single parents have easy access to vital health information for their children.
Target Audience
The target audience for my app will be newly single parents who are overwhelmed with the amount of responsibilities that come after getting divorced or after having a child. My product will also be useful for those who have already been single parents for some time.
Potential Features
Health profiles: Store important health documents, such as medical reports, vaccination records, and prescriptions for each profile.
Notifications: Receive timely notifications for upcoming appointments, medications, and vaccinations.
Appointment Calendar: Add upcoming appointments to a calendar.
Co-Parenting Tools: Enable easy coordination of schedules between co-parents for upcoming appointments.
Vaccine Tracker: Checklist-based interface showing recommended vaccination schedules based on age and regional immunization guidelines.
Medication Tracker: Medications that each child is taking, the dosages, and what they are for.
Resources: Articles on child nutrition, preventative care, mental health issues, stress management, substance abuse, etc.
Research Methods
Competitor Analysis
Interview
Me: What kinds of struggles did you face as a single parent?
Mom: One of the main struggles I faced was missing her major life events. I was working full time and missed many of her important events in life. Another major struggle was financially. I was not receiving any child support from my ex husband and so everything fell on me. Despite working so hard, my paycheck was not enough to make both ends meet.
Me: What kind of resources do you think would have been helpful during your struggle?
Mom: I wish there was a tool to organize her school life, personal life, and her health.
Me: Were there any times where you had to seek external resources to meet your child’s needs?
Mom: Yes.
Me: How were you able to manage your child’s healthcare and other medical situations while balancing your other life commitments?
Mom: I was able to receive healthcare benefits and food stamps from the country.
Me: Can you share specific challenges you encountered in managing yours and your child's medical records?
Mom: Even though we signed up for online access to our records, I did not know how to use it well. Instead, I kept all of our records in a physical folder. On top of that, because of my PTSD, I was having a difficult time keeping up with my daughter's and my medical updates.
Research Insights
From my analysis of the MyChart app, I found that the most important part of navigating through the app was the strong use of icons. However, their interface was outdated and boring. Having a more user-friendly interface would allow the user to easily navigate and find what they are looking for.
My interview with my mom prompted me to ask myself how I can make this app simple and easy to learn. With all the stress from other responsibilities, I want my app to feel relaxing and fun for the user to use.
Usability Testing
I had a total of 6 people test my app and complete the prototyped tasks
While I received positive feedback overall, there were a few areas of improvement that most of my users agreed on:
1. There isn't a clear differentiation between the mom and the dads date on the calendars.
2. The vaccination page needs more work (ie. information on each vaccine, easier way to filter through).
2. A few inconsistencies in the information on the app (ie. checklist isn't up to date).
The following prototype was made after editing the usability testing results.
Part 2: Prototype
Log In/Sign Up Sequence
Home Pages
Change Profile
Add Upcoming Appointment
Vaccination Checklist
Mockup
