Genesis
Health 365 was designed as part of the Coursera UCSD interaction design specialization capstone project. I selected the topic ‘Change’ — Can technology help people and communities change their behavior to meet their goals? How can we recognize when change needs to occur and determine appropriate goals? What methods can be effective in triggering and maintaining change?
Ideation
With the idea of health and nutrition related change, I did observed and interviewed 3 people to find opportunities for this ‘change’.
It was through these observations that I realised most people would like to snack on more healthy foods but they are often too lazy to make a conscious effort to collect information and make this change.
Technology could provide a fun and unobtrusive way to encourage people to make healthier choices. I coupled this with my interest in IOT devices to come up with 2 concepts.
Conceptualization and storyboarding
Next, I did a series of storyboards followed by paper prototypes. We learnt that rapid prototyping would increase efficiency by allowing us to create iterations of a product and refine it in a very short time and at a very low cost.
Interactive Prototype
Next an interactive prototype was built. This prototype would allow users to get a better idea of the look and feel of the application while being able to actually navigate and test interactions.
Testing and testing
Heuristics were employed to do a first round of checks followed by usability tests. These checks and tests helped to unearth many usability issues with the prototype.
A/B Testing
An alternative design was created based on the feedback garnered from the usability tests. The designs were A/B tested to see which one users found easier to use.
Final Changes and Ship!
One last iteration and the application is finally complete. In retrospective, this project highlighted the importance of placing users first and doing actual testing as opposed to assuming what users would want.
