Glu1 is an up-and-coming health tech company based in Miami, Florida. The company’s mission is to help patients prevent, treat, or reverse diabetes, by providing comprehensive medical and nutritional services.

​

The goal of this project was to build Glu1’s brand and create their website, both from scratch.

Branding, User Research, Interface Design, Marketing

​

February 2022 – July 2022

I was hired as the Head of Product and was in charge of building Glu1’s brand identity, the brand guidelines, and the UX/UI for their website. After launching the MVP, I was in charge of digital marketing, and website optimization.

There’s not a unique UX Process. It really depends on the type of product you’re designing. Different projects require different approaches. Nevertheless, Design Thinking is a great approach to problem solving in order to create or improve products. This process has five stages in it: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test.

In my personal UX Process, I modified the classic Design Thinking process, coming up with a four-stage hybrid process:

​

In my personal UX Process, I modified the classic Design Thinking process, coming up with a four-stage hybrid process:

96 million Americans have diabetes in the United States, which is 1 out of 3 Americans. In 2019, diabetes was the seventh leading cause of death in the United States. Because diabetes is a complex disease that presents several challenges, we wanted to first dive in and learn as much as possible about the current situation in the United States.

​

Glu1’s founder and CEO, Sonia Gibson is an endocrinologist with over 10 years of experience. Her insights with first-hand interactions with patients helped us identify major challenges that we could focus on.

Most follow-up doctor appointments are only 15-20 minutes long and they usually happen every 3 months. The visits are very standard: medications refill and hba1c levels checkup. This lack of personalization is a major pain point for many patients. Patients need frequent doctor visits to go over glucose values and adjust medications accordingly

Diabetes is a condition that needs to be managed on a daily basis. Self-management tools like nutrition advice, access to glucose monitoring devices and technology, as well as psychological support have shown to play a major role in preventing diabetes complications. Many patients don’t have access to these tools, as they have high costs and are not connected.

Diabetes is a condition that needs to be managed on a daily basis. Self-management tools like nutrition advice, access to glucose monitoring devices and technology, as well as psychological support have shown to play a major role in preventing diabetes complications. Many patients don’t have access to these tools, as they have high costs and they are not connected.

Having these valuable insights definitely helped us have a clear vision of how to communicate with the end-user and execute the website design.

We conducted interviews with diabetes patients. The main goal was to validate our initial findings. It was very interesting to see the similarities found in the interviews and in the previous research:

It was very important for them to be able to have the same or next appointments and not wait long periods of time.

​

It’s difficult and time-consuming for patients to juggle primary doctor visits, nutritional programs, access to glucose monitoring, and in some cases, psychological support. It would be much easier and more efficient to easily access all these things in one single place.

With Glu1, we identified two types of potential patients to whom we wanted to bring comprehensive care:

​

Despite having similarities, these are two different types of patients. The plans that we offer each of them, as well as the communication, are going to be different in each scenario.

When it comes to sensitive subjects such as health, many companies choose a formal, cold, and technical communication style. This approach scares users, as they may not be acquainted with many terms.

​

Medicine and health are very sensitive topics and that’s why we came up with a communication strategy focused on clear, friendly writing. Rather than intimidating users, we wanted to build a humane relationship based on trust.

​

Here is the communication model that we followed. In the center, we picked the three most important aspects that we wanted to communicate to our target audience:

With all of these findings, the problem was clear: 

​

​

The solution that we needed to work on was an all-in-one platform, where patients have access to all their diabetic needs.

The starting point for the ideation and prototype stage was structuring the sitemap. Having a good understanding of the architecture of the website is crucial before even thinking about designing.

It was important to have a simple, straight-forward, website. We didn’t want to overpopulate it with complex information, and after several brainstorming sessions with the stakeholders, we came up with this sitemap.

Having a defined sitemap helps us compressing and simplifying information as much as possible.

Another important consideration for a seamless and good user experience is an easy customer journey. Despite having external integrations (We used Kareo, a medical platform used for scheduling appointments, receiving payments, etc.) we wanted to have an easy onboarding process, with the least number of steps possible.

​

This is the sign-up customer journey map that we created.

We needed to create an interactive, easy, and intuitive process to give potential patients the best experience possible. That’s why we researched for UX Trends that could help us succeed.

​

There are many trends every year; the digital experience is constantly changing. Among the many UX trends, we chose four tendencies that could make the onboarding and overall experience better: Balance between illustrations and images, micro-interactions, storytelling or UX Writing, and minimalism.

We chose to use illustrations over images not only because they add a pinch of style and artistic harmony, but because they can explain complicated concepts of your product. You can try explaining an instance or an action with words and information, but an illustration is a very powerful tool that can influence the user’s decisions. On the other hand, humor conveyed in the illustration constitutes its significant part: it can motivate people to perform certain actions.

They are design elements and their purpose is to delight the user by creating an engaging moment that is welcoming and, let’s say it – human. In the UX/UI world, micro-interactions are the powerhouse when it comes to communicating with the user

• They improve navigation

• They make the user experience much more rewarding

• They direct users’ attention

• They make your product more emotional

• They make it easier to interact with your site

I strongly believe that one of the most underrated practices in the user experience world. It’s the act of thoughtfully crafting every copy in your digital product, from CTAs, product descriptions to copy used in chatbots and voice interactions, so that language feels natural and conversational. Communication is crucial, especially if we want to have a human interaction with the end-user.

Applying a minimalist take on design can actually help to improve a user’s experience by reducing the distractions surrounding their ability to complete a task or make a decision. Cutting out steps in the process to make a task simpler or faster goes a long way in creating a positive experience.

The sitemap and the site journey map definitely helped having a clear understanding of how the designs should look like. On the other hand, the visual elements (illustrations and images), the micro-interactions, and the storytelling helped us designing a very user-friendly website.

​

These are some of the first wireframes that we used:

After coming up with the final wireframe prototype, it was time for the high-resolution designs. I wanted to use a lot of white-space and be as concise as possible with the communication.

The homepage has a micro-interaction for users to easily identify which path they wanted to take: the diabetes prevention or the diabetes treatment plan. This created a seamless experience for anyone entering the site.

The other pages followed the same structure:

​

​

Here are some of the final designs:

In order to continually improve the UX, we used HotJar and Google Analytics and really observe what our users were doing. By observing their real-life behavior, we were able to optimize the website and make is simpler and friendlier. Continually optimizing the website is important to keep improving!

It was very important to have a clear understanding of what we were creating. Having brainstorming sessions and discussions about the sitemap structure and the user's site journey were crucial in order to create a seamless experience.

In order to build a great user experience, we needed to make the onboarding easy. By grouping certain questions into coherent steps, we created a flow that wasn’t difficult for the user to fill out. Using UX Trends such as Illustrations, Micro-interactions, UX Writing, and Minimalism, we were able to create an intuitive and simple experience.

n order to create a great product, teamwork is a must! Constant communication with the engineers to understand the viability of certain design parts is important. Not everything you see on Dribbble or Behance is realistic, and it’s important for us, designers, to meet halfway with the development team. Yes, User Experience is important, but we also need to know how prioritize certain aspects of the product.