Take Your Meds: Paper Prototype
Purpose
The goal for this assignment was to create an application for both the Apple Watch and iPhone that synchronizes data between the two. I created an application called Take Your Meds that allows the user to keep track of their medications as well as log symptoms and notes in an efficient and effortless way. The phone and watch have slightly different features since the purpose of each device differs based off of their functionality. The phone allows the user to add medications, view their medication schedule, and view their list of current and previous medications. The watch allows the user to view medication reminders and log medications, symptoms, and notes. I designed the watch with these functions because it is easy to forget when you got a headache or how many times you got one last week and so having the ability to easily keep track of symptoms when you get them seemed like an important feature to implement on the watch.
Brainstorming
I came up with the idea and decided to list out features before jumping into designing the app. I first listed features I thought would be important or helpful and then I sorted them into either the phone or watch category, as seen in the photo below.
Design Sketches
Based off of the features I ended up selecting, I drew a few sketches to help determine the layout and functionality. I consulted with two users to get some feedback before transitioning from my sketches to the paper prototype so I could get a second round of feedback using the actual paper prototype. I got some good feedback about transitions between screens and the layout. They also mentioned the ability to quickly log things through the watch and have those show up on the phone.
Sketch Feedback
Two users thought that there could be colored dots on the calendar view to help distinguish between various medications. They also mentioned that the dots could be limiting because of the space they took up on each day but they thought I could move forward with the assumption that most users won’t have more than five separate medications each day. So I moved on to creating the paper prototype.
Paper Prototype Design
I decided to make different screens and views on different sheets of paper and cut a lot of pieces out to place on top of the screens to help with user testing. I wanted to make sure my prototype didn’t significantly limit the user when testing the prototype so I wrote out tasks to help them test the design and functionality. I made sure to think through scenarios that might come up during testing and how my prototype would handle them. I included pieces of paper with tape on the back for the user to stick on to help test the interactions required to complete each task. A demo of my paper prototype can be viewed below.
User Testing Setup
Some of my friends tested my prototype by sitting down at a table in our house with the prototype in front of them. I introduced the user to the app and gave them a brief description of the features and functionality. Then I gave the users the following tasks to see how they would complete them and if there were any major issues with how my prototype was setup.
- Show me how you would add a medication, specifically a Multivitamin 2x per day at 9:00am and 9:00pm.
- (Advil was already entered into the app so the I made a reminder pop up on the watch with a beeping sound) Remember to take Advil.
- Show me how you would look at your medication schedule.
- How would you refill your medication?
- Now look at a specific medication.
- Imagine you are in the middle of class and you start to get a headache. How would you log that you have a headache?
User Testing Analysis and Reflection
I got some feedback from the users I tested with as well as from the critique session in class with some of my classmates. I got some great feedback about the actual paper prototype as well as the design of the application and their experience using it. The main feature that people liked both in the user tests and in the classroom critique was the watch logging feature. They liked the ability to quickly log a symptom or medication and they liked how it was designed on the watch. They felt like it was easy, intuitive, and a great use of the watch’s design. I also got a lot of positive feedback about my prototype because the users and my classmates felt like they could freely interact with the application and click around without breaking the prototype’s setup or disrupting the fluidity of the testing process. Some areas of improvement included the use of space on the main home page, including voice notes on the watch, logging symptoms separate from medications, and allowing users to share their symptoms and data with their doctor. I also got helpful feedback about my video. I tried to show the functionality of my prototype and all of the features I included but my classmates helped point out that the video moved too quickly to understand what was being shown. For my next project, I will slow down the video and show the main highlights of the product as well as some of the user testing. I tried to simulate a user test in my video but I think the speed made that hard to userstand. In conclusion, I think my paper prototype successfully helped me test my application idea and how interacting with both the watch and phone would work. I think the feedback that I got would be great to implement if I were going to go through another iteration of the design process for this application because I would have concrete points and clear steps to follow.
