Client: Kriash

About the Project

This was the capstone project completed during the General Assembly User Experience Design Immersive program. Our team worked to produce a high-fidelity prototype for a customer-facing app that would integrate with a device that collects biometric data. 

Timeline: 3 weeks

My role: Research Lead

• Research documentation

• User Research

• User Flows

• Research synthesis

• Presentation

• Illustration

• Writing

Background on Kriash

The Mission: 

To support the bond between parents and their infants, as well as promote health and wellness for both.

The Product: 

Non-invasive, wireless sensor bracelet + patch that offers continuous monitoring of baby’s vitals & tracks Skin-to-Skin Care. 

Project Goal: 

A parent-facing mobile app that interfaces with the product to provide feedback on the health and wellness of both.

Discover

My goal as the research lead was to learn more about the primary use case of the product we were designing the app for. The product was based on decades of medical research so I delved into secondary research options, such as research papers, expert documentation from the World Health Organization, and more to learn about the history of the subject matter. I was able to use much of what I learned as a foundation to support our interviews. The initial research I performed continued to inform why the goals of Skin-to-skin care were important throughout the project.

User Interviews

The user interviews focused on two aspects we wanted to know more about 

• First, we wanted to understand the experience of being a new parent. That included what information a parent might want or need. 

• Second, we asked our interviewees about what they liked about different health and fitness tracking apps that they have used. 

We conducted 10 interviews to gather information on how and why people use apps and their thoughts on monitoring their newborns. Here are some quotes that represent our findings:

“Learning how to care for my infant was overwhelming because it’s just a firehose of knowledge all at once and you don’t know what is going to be applicable to your baby.”

• This was one of several quotes that led us to our first finding: Parents are overwhelmed by sifting through resources to find ones that align with their family due to the amount of resources available on infant care. 

“It’s really important to be able to read your kid because you have a 5-minute window to meet their need.”

• Our second key finding was that Parents feel best when they feel like they are doing as much as they can to understand their baby’s cues

"Emotional support would have made my experience as a new mom easier– I was very depressed and lonely, especially during COVID.” 

• Parents really value increased emotional support when they have a new baby.

“The Garmin app chunks out the data into sections- each section has a graph or chart that makes it easy to understand.”

• People want to visualize their progress towards their goals in a simple way.

Competitive and Comparative Analysis: 

We reviewed several apps that are competitive and comparative to what we were designing. We used this evaluation to determine how we could differentiate our designs from what was currently offered in the market. 

1. MamaCuddles sees an opportunity to solve the gap in the baby monitoring market for Skin-to-skin care.  

2. We also identified sleep as an opportunity that the MamaCuddles app/device could track, although it is being provided by a small number of competitors. 

Define

Once we had our research completed, the team began to look into how to synthesize what we had learned so far about potential users, other players in the market, and the initial review of medical documentation. We would use the next phase to narrow in on pain points and to develop user personas. 

Affinity Mapping

With 10 User interviews to draw from, we had an extensive amount of information. Our team worked to categorize and sub-categorize the findings into similarities which in turn helped us identify and focus on some of the bigger issues. Our affinity mapping helped us to focus on the following primary areas that we wanted to create experiences for in the app.

Motivation to continue tracking/monitoring

• Health maintenance

• Noting irregularities

• Establishing bond       

Learning

• Type of learning

• Trusted sources

Tracking Data

• Types of Data

• Progress

• Notifications

User Journey

We looked at several scenarios for our user journey map: including with and without the app we were building and the different use cases. The prospective User Journey that was developed played an ongoing role in our decisions on what needed to be included in the app.

Personas

The personas we developed focused on two scenarios: a parent with a full-term baby and a premature baby. We wanted to demonstrate how the app would benefit both personas given their unique situations. Our primary persona whose baby was full-term was developed to reflect the majority of the initial customer base for at-home post-hospital care. 

Primary Persona

Secondary Persona

Personas Similarities and Differences

Identifying the similarities and differences between our two personas helped us to identify and prioritize features that we wanted to include within the app.

Problem Statement

Fiona—a first-time mom who has just arrived home with her newborn—needs a better way to track her goals and understand her baby’s developmental milestones because she wants to take care of her baby as best as she can.

Design

With well-defined user needs and research synthesis, we moved into the design phase well informed. To get started on the process we drew inspiration from some of our competitor and comparator apps.

Below is an example of some of the features we looked at for inspiration.

How Might We Statements

As a team, we developed many How Might We statements to help create solutions for the problem statement. We settled on the following statements as being our primary How Might We statements as these statements really spoke to what the app needed to accomplish to be successful and deliver a useful tool for the new parent. 

• How might we support Fiona emotionally during the difficult postpartum months?

• How might we encourage parents to take action to support their baby’s development?

• How might we integrate the care process into Fiona’s life in a streamlined way?

• How might we help Fiona recall questions that she wants to ask her doctor?

Research Synthesis For Design

Our key findings pointed toward building a dashboard that was clear and easy to understand. The ability to track goals and get information related to what the parent was looking at was also important. The ability to create and share notes/milestones was also highly desired. With these important insights in mind we began designing our initial wireframes. 

Wire Flows and Wireframes

Our team had developed a pretty clear idea of what we wanted to create based on the user flows and built some example screens for the major sections of the app. As we transitioned from Wire flows to wireframes we were able to segment out our areas for development and quickly tackle the necessary pieces for each section, such as the dashboard, biometrics, milestones, learning and resources, and notes.

Dashboard & Biometric Details

We know our users are busy, tired parents. That’s why we designed an eye-catching home page with important biometric stats easily available at a glance. Users can click through to view further details and insights for each individual biometric featured on the dashboard.

• we wanted to keep the dashboard clean, friendly, and easy to understand at a glance

• thinking through how to communicate abnormal biometric readings to users

• thinking about how we wanted to deliver insights 

Main Features

Our other main features include:

• Developmental milestones

• Resources and support 

• Note creation  

Each of the main features would be easily accessible through the bottom navigation bar. We decided on a bottom navigation bar to keep all the information within easy reach of a parent who might be trying to use the app and hold their baby at the same time. 

Branding, Colors, and Tone

It was important to design visuals that catered to our baby-centered app while still appealing to the adults who use it. 

To do this, we created simple illustrated icons and paired them with muted pastels to give the app a youthful feel.

Delivery

With our prototype well into development, we turned our focus on finalizing our app prototype through user testing and creating a high-fidelity prototype.

Prototype

Our prototype was a detailed demonstration of the app that looked at the app as a whole and how all the features were connected. The ability to take a note from any screen, gain access to resources and information, and receive an alert to resolve it. 

Usability Testing

We wanted to see how well our potential users could navigate and understand the app, and to gain valuable insight into how well the app was being received. We did find that the alerts timeline on the home screen was not as easily learnable as we would have liked, but overall everyone was able to navigate and use the app as intended. Our note feature was very well received by our testers.

Client Deliverable

Our team designed and delivered a high-fidelity prototype in Figma that was developer-ready. In addition to designing and developing the primary screens we also developed a series of flows for how users would navigate within the app, accounting for as many paths a user may take within the app. 

Summary of Results

During the three-week process, we met with our client on a regular basis to go over where we were and to ensure we were aligned with their goals and needs. Our team provided a final presentation to our client along with information on how we would hand off our files. We explained that the files were ready for development through Figma. The client, Kriash, was excited about what we had created and how it met and even exceeded their expectations. 

We are excited to see where the product goes from here as it enters development. It was a great partnership and we all learned a lot from working with each other. More specifically, our client understood the value of our research as we validated the needs of potential users and ensured our final product met those customer needs.