Project Overview
Living Maples is a Canadian startup that tries to help lower the risk of developing dementia & Alzheimer's disease in seniors. This project is a Medicine Reminder Pill Tracker Android application, designed for seniors. I was the UX/UI lead in this project and I managed and mentored six designers. I directed the product design vision, set milestones, evaluated the project’s progress, and gave feedback to designers.
Problem Statement
Many medicine reminders are available, but none are designed specifically for seniors and people with Alzheimer's disease. We did a lot of research on other applications and we specified the details that matter to seniors to create an application with what they want.
My Workflow
To keep myself at my best to be able to manage efficiently, I followed certain steps each day.
- Mind Maps
- Defining Tasks and Notifications
- Reviews
- Meetings
Mind Maps
I used multiple task lists and to-do lists and I found out the mind mapping tools are more effective and they can help me organize my thoughts easier. So, I created a mind map every day. And I wrote all the things in my mind there. It helped me stay focused and don't miss anything. Below you can see one of my mind maps.
Defining Tasks and Notifications
After writing everything, I started by creating tasks for designers on the Trello board. I discovered each of my designers had their own way of understanding so I tried to define their tasks based on their point of view of things. After defining the tasks I sent the messages in groups and emails. Below you can see some screenshots of our Trello board.
Reviews
After I made sure that the directions are clear for each task, I began to review and check the deliverables from the day before. All team members knew that I review their work at certain times every day, so they knew the exact time for their deadline.
Meetings
After my review, I scheduled my meetings. These meetings include feedback meetings, new task meetings, and presentations. By the end of each day, I sent a report to the director. Also, every three days, I had a meeting with the director to discuss current issues and feature objectives.
Design Process
We used a Design Thinking approach in this project. and we changed the basics to help us solve the problems in our project. We repeated the first diamond twice in the first stage so we had two convergence phases during this process.
We followed the below steps in the first diamond:
- Research in the first divergence phase. (Empathize)
- Mood board and persona in the first convergence phase. (Define)
- Feature list in the second divergence phase. (Ideate)
- User story and user flow in the second convergence phase. (Define)
Research
In this phase, our focus was on brainstorming and diverging the problem scope as much as possible. So, I asked my team to conduct detailed research on similar apps. I asked them to write about the most important features, pros and cons, ratings and reviews, screenshots, and a step-by-step review of the essential tasks of that app. I also asked them to brainstorm and propose new ideas. After they created the document, we discussed it in a meeting. At the end of the document, I asked them to add two sections for the conclusion and their creative ideas. Below you can see the final document and some screenshots of it.
Mood Board and Persona
This startup had certain users, and their team already did a thorough research about the users, and we had the details for that on the documents they shared. So we just created a simple visual cue for that. Also, I asked our team to create a simple mood board out of the study to easily have it in mind while starting the process. Below you can see the result for the Mood board and the Persona.
Feature List
After sending the research document to the UX director and stakeholders and getting feedback, our team started to work on the feature list. We created a collaborative document where designers could add the features, we were still in a divergence phase and we assumed that every feature is possible. We had multiple meetings discussing those features. Then we clustered them into three categories. Must have, nice to have, and next phase. We sent the document to the stakeholders, and we applied their feedback on a list as well, and then we had the exact features to start with. Below you can see some parts of that collaborative document after clustering.
User Story and User Flow
After finalizing the features, we started the user story process. UX designers started to work on that on a new collaborative document. I reviewed it, and we fixed the problems. Then we moved on to the user flow. My UX team created a mind map for the flow. I asked them to do that in as detail as possible. For each story, we assigned a number and we used it beneath each thread of the user flow. and we discussed the map in meetings. Below you can see the user story document and user flow. As you can see in the pictures, the user story numbers are added below each fellow with white color.
Prototyping
After all the analytic phases, we finally got to the wireframe phase. I had 4 designers on staff, and they were working in groups of two. We started with Lo-Fi wireframes. We were focusing on the UX and logical part most in this phase. They sent me their work every day, and after my feedback, every three days, each team had a short presentation (for me and the other team) in order to stay consistent with each other. After finalizing the wireframes, each team worked on making the Hi-Fi version. And we continued with the previous workflow. Below you can see some of the prototypes.
UI Design
One group of designers started to work on the UI Kit while the other group was finishing the Hi-Fi prototypes. We decided to use Material Design, and we created a document from the elements we needed. You can see the UI Kit in this image.
By this time, the color, typography and components, and Hi-Fi prototypes were ready. The only step was the final design.
At this point I had to leave the project because of my relocation to USA so the team continued the UI design and collaborating with the technical team. You can see the final product here.
Ratings and Reviews
This app has more than 1 thousand downloads, and its current rating in the Google play store is 4. It’s obvious that the app needs further adjustment and user testing in the next phases. You can see some reviews below.
Takeaways
I had mentored an intern before, and I taught her multiple things, but this was my first experience in leading junior designers. Also, this was a completely online experience, and I didn't see my team members in person. So it made communication even more challenging. This experience taught me a lot of things and I’m glad that I had that. These are a few things that I learned:
- I am responsible for creating collaboration within the team.
- I don't know what people are dealing with.
- It's easy to put pressure on people without knowing it.
- In the beginning, I was trying to treat every team member the same, but as we went forward, I realized that each person has their own way of understanding, so I developed different approaches to collaborate with each of them.