Impact at a glance
Placement in competition (Finalists)
Mobile screens prototyped, including panes and overlays
Tasks flows evaluated against usability heuristics
View the prototype
I proposed pregnancy as our healthcare topic, but no one in the team had actually experienced it. Our first step was to gain an understanding of how pregnancy is currently supported.
We discovered some staggering figures that affirmed perinatal care as an underserved area worthwhile to focus on:
The average wait time for an OB/GYN in rural United States is 6 months
Less than one-third of women of childbearing age know the benefits of folic acid
The maternal mortality rate in the United States was 10x higher than that of its peers
We conducted 4 generative semi-structured interviews to supplement our desk research, seeking insight into the current state of medical intervention during pregnancy.
I proposed app features based around three emergent themes:
Hesitancy around doctors -> Journal to enable users to document notes for self-advocacy during appointments
Limited access to healthcare -> Tracker to help users identify when symptoms may be abnormal
Interest in community support -> Community to grant users a support network during a highly personal experience
For round 2, teams were asked to produce a high-fidelity wireframe prototype of their app. I challenged myself to independently create a design system following our submission so that I could further refine my personal visual design skills.
This system included brand and semantic colour tokens, typography styles using a major second (1.125) scale, and key components including a tab bar, buttons, chips, and cards.
Finally, I tested colour combinations using EightShapes Contrast Grid to ensure use of colour complied with WCAG 2.0 AA standards.
My biggest takeaway
You don't always have to do something novel. Our journal feature was initially designed with a calendar functionality that our industry mentor advised would be pretty much obsolete — anyone who needs a calendar probably already uses one. We iterated our design to enable imports from popular calendar apps, and identified other areas where we could work with users' existing routines rather than replace them.