HApi Journey
Designed for pregnant women, Top 10 of Medical Category in App Store. I helped client transform concept to product.
About the product
The Hospital Authority HApi Journey is a mobile application aiming to guide moms-to-be through their pregnancy journey by providing professional information and tools to monitor their health status.
Mission & achievement
My mission is to turn the large set of information and tools, provided by Hospital Authority, into an appealing and intuitive product, in both iOS and Android platform.
On the first day of release, the app ranked №7 in App Store Top Chart. Since its launch, the ranking stays Top 10 of Medical Category in 2016.
Try it now
Download from App Store, Google Play
Client
Hong Kong Hospital Authority
Team
UX/UI Design: Tracy Tam
Illustrations: Wendy Ip
Engineers: Guojie Zeng, Benny Ye, Kim Lam
Project Manager: Bonnie Mou
Period
Feb 2016 — Feb 2017
Define challenge
Before drilling down to the tender provided by Hospital Authority, I set up stakeholder interviews to understand their goal and expectation. They wanted to improve the image by bringing more accessible and reliable information to the public via mobile apps, starting with the obstetric department.
Additionally, Audit Commission released a report, criticizing the low download rates of government-funded apps. The target audience of the product was pregnant women in Hong Kong, which was relatively a small group. To ensure the download rate, the product had to be appealing enough.
Conclusion
From the information gathered, the goal became very clear: the design must be tech barrier-free to serve citizens at all levels to provide reliable information with a high level of user engagement.
Design strategies
1. Structure information architecture
After interviews with the obstetric doctors, a list of the most useful functions was quickly defined.
By card sorting, I found the best way to categorize them was:
- Articles to read
- Tools to use
During the interviews, I found one thing very interesting. The articles and tools are highly related to one factor: the period of pregnancy. To make the experience more intuitive, articles and tools are appropriately displayed on the home page based on users’ pregnancy periods. That means users can access to information they need without looking for it.
2. Design wireframe
The frequency of using “Account and Setting” is much lower than the others. To minimize the distractions, I applied hamburger menu for “Account and Setting” and tab bar for other frequently used features, even though it seemed to be against the book.
3. Craft visual
The visual style makes a big difference in terms of the public image. To echo with the theme, the visual style was designed to cater for moms-to-be. The color scheme and iconography was designed in a more approachable style.
4. Gamify experience
Functionality is not enough. The experience of using the app should be full of joy. Users’ efforts are praised by applying a game-level concept.
There are two levels of achievement for our users in the app and rewards are designed accordingly:
- Accomplish the periodically learning tasks
- Give birth to the baby
Gather feedbacks
Verify with the Professionals
In the design process, I got the chance to keep very close contact with obstetric doctors to ensure the accuracy and usefulness of the app, from overall function to detail-suggested health data.
Test with Pregnant Women
Usability tests are and focus group interviews were conducted to gather feedback regarding 3 aspects: the usefulness, usability, and satisfaction of the app. The result helped not only improve the user experience but also measure the success for clients.
Overview
Testimonial & retrospective
Working on this project gave me a chance to communicate with clients and users with a totally different background. I’ve learned the communication skills to maximize different people’s strength. Doctors in the obstetric department are pro in medical and health, while my knowledge of product design helped them achieve their goal.
This product is not solving an everyday problem that I’ve ever faced. Putting myself in pregnant women’s shoes is another challenging part.
There was of course imperfection. Some requirements came in the later part of development. Due to the timeline and cost, it was hard to apply the best UX solution, which is a shame.
However, from the result of ranking and reviews, I’m very happy to see how it changed the stereotype of government products.
