What is AMMA?
AMMA is a mobile application that helps asthma sufferers track and manage their asthma symptoms. It's primary goal is to build awareness around environmental triggers and provide access to help or medical care.
Problem
Designlab, as an academic assignment, asked students to create a companion app for a wearable device that tracks breathing patterns, sleeping patterns, and common symptoms for asthma sufferers. The device would changes colors in accordance with the state of the wearer's condition and alert medical physicians and family members during emergencies.
Process Overview
I managed the product development phases from research to visual design. To gain empathy and understanding I completing user interviews, analysis of competitors and secondary research online. Drawing from insights, I outlined potential features and examined their feasibility in the first release of the companion app. Next, I described major flows and presented these ideas to participants with asthma. With feedback, I sketched out wireframes. I worked to create a clickable prototype and tested with users. Lastly, I created a visual mockup and did another round of testing.
User Research: Key Design Questions & Decisions
To gain a thorough understanding of how asthma sufferers control their asthma, the types of people impacted by asthma, and the pain points of asthma sufferers, I drafted goals in a research plan.
My outlined goals in the research plan were:
-Understand feelings, beliefs, opinions around asthma as a disease and attacks in particular
-Learn about existing solutions for dealing with asthma attacks
-Gain knowledge of common environmental and individual triggers for symptoms
-Figure out current methods or tools used to gauge and track symptoms
-Understand how family, friends, and community are involved in an individual’s treatment, symptoms, and attacks
Literature Review
Reviewing "Asthma Facts CDC's National Asthma Control Program Grantees" (2013) painted a picture around the identity of asthma suffers. I discovered 14.2 million work days are missed due to asthma attacks. Also, children are often provided with more education on self management than adults. Higher rates of asthma exist among women as opposed to men and multi-race people are affected more than other races. With this information, I focused my research on younger multi-race women who have been dealing with asthma since they were young and were hospitalized at least once due to an asthma attack.
User Interviews
Conducting user interviews, I asked questions to understand the system at work in asthma sufferers lives. Key insights revealed attacks often happened at night, usually when participants were alone. Also the ever present symptoms caused a "habituation effect" where participants often wouldn't notice an increase in symptoms.
The research showcased all the moving parts within the lives of asthma sufferers. Because symptoms were ever present a variety of people and places were involved asthma management and control. Sometimes complete strangers were involved in getting help or medical care.
This was the persona created after synthesizing the data.
Home Screen Iterations
Drawing from the initial research I placed data on vitals, symptoms, and triggers on the home screen. All of this information proved to be overwhelming when I shared it with participants. In my next iteration, I revisited the research and asked myself what would really help users with management and control. I recognized focusing on triggers could better help them plan and manage their day. In this use case, the user would wake up and learn about triggers in their environment before they went out into the world.
Prototype & Testing
I built a prototype based on the persona, flows, wireframes and uses cases. To prepare for testing I outlined goals in a test plan. I observed participants completing tasks as I read them a scenario and asked general questions to gauge if the high level concept was working.
A key issue arose around the export flow when users emailed out their health data. The confirmation after sending a report needed clarity and there were concerns about viewing the report. I solved this by providing a separate confirmation screen after emailing the report and added an inbox where they could review the report. Another issue arose around navigation names. In order to resolve the confusion around the "Health" screen where their vitals were tracked I changed the name of this screen to "Tracking."
Final screens
After working out issues discovered in testing, I ironed out the visual style. I wanted users to feel engaged and informed. For the logo I chose an organic looking font that felt like air or breathing. Because this application could potentially be used during stressful times I chose a blue for a more calming feel.
