From Research Grant to Real-Life Social Impact
How human-centered design transforms medical research into action that improves people’s health.
As a practitioner and researcher focused on sexual health and well being, Holly Fontenot, PhD, RN, WHNP-BC, knows a lot about sexually transmitted diseases and infections — in particular the human papillomavirus or HPV.
There are about 79 million Americans infected with HPV; 14 million more are infected each year, making it is the most common STI. Still, the infection is a mystery to the general public. This lack of awareness is especially true among young gay men of color.
For Dr. Fontenot’s work at The Fenway Institute, it became her mission to go beyond research. She is driven to develop new and innovative ways to engage and educate underserved populations. Her latest idea was to develop an app whose purpose is to educate young gay men of color about HPV and offer them the ability to get vaccinated.
Rather than choosing a traditional “dev shop” to build her app, Dr. Fontenot understood that she wanted to create a holistic user experience for maximum effectiveness.
Enter Story+Structure.
Understanding the value in a human-centered approach, Dr. Fontenot engaged S+S early on. We contributed to the grant proposal to the National Institute of Health that funded the project.
With the grant secured, we began to learn about our target audience. Focus groups comprised of gay men, aged 18–26, were conducted in three major cities to gain insight into social activities and personal preferences.
Rapid prototyping and testing helped us determine the following needs:
- The app should be web-based, not native, in order to remove barriers;
- Content within the app should be conversational and relaxed, without losing sight of the seriousness of the issue.
- We needed a visual language and identity that would better guide the tone of our ads, videos, content, and overall experience.
With S+S’s newly expanded creative capability, we were able to provide all of the components in the user journey, including the visuals for the ad campaign, the app’s logo, and the video content within the app.
The resulting app, called HealthTea, is a seamless, holistic healthcare experience that begins with a series of ads that run inside a dating app that, when clicked, brings the user to the survey, then into the app where the user can educate themselves about HPV, and schedule an appointment to get vaccinated. After their first vaccination (it takes three), they can even keep track of appointments and get updates.
“Everybody on the S+S team was incredibly excited to work on this project because of the real potential for social impact. Plus, we got to utilize Story+Structure’s full breadth of experience.”
— Chokdee Rutirasiri, Founder, Story+Structure
