PillPal
health engagment and accountability
OVERVIEW
COLLABORATORS
Individual Project
MY ROLES
UX + UI
Visual Design
TOOLS
Figma
Invision Studio
Illustrator
TIMEFRAME
10 weeks
PillPal was a previous group project I had worked on with the goal of creating a smart pillbox and app to help users stay on top of their health and medication. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to fully build out each component, but the app design was always something I wanted to come back and refine to practice my product design skills. So after carving out some time, I finally sat down and set to fully flesh out the app experience as a stand-alone component.
The outcome is a fully prototyped app that engages users and keeps them accountable for their health journey. As a guide, it does its best to streamline the prescription to intake reminder process, tying in friends and family to hold you accountable, and integrating with your lifestyle.
Streamlining medications schedules
PillPal makes it easy to scan pharmacy issued barcodes and make updates to your schedule.
Travel with confidence
Travel with confidence by using our travel planner feature. PillPal makes it easy to adjust your medication schedule while you enjoy your vacation.
Including family and friends
Include family and friends to keep them informed and you accountable.
PROCESS
A lot of key insights came from previous user research we had conducted with a nurse who was also undergoing medical treatment. She was able to not only give her perspective as a patient but also as a caregiver.
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Cultural Probes
Cultural probes gave insight on pain points within our user’s daily routines and activities. From this, we learned about the struggle that our user was having with consistently incorporating her new medication into her daily routine without accountability
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Ethnographic Interview
We learned that the hospital gives patients barcodes that are scanned to print out a list of medication that the patient has to take. This was a key moment of opportunity to think about how to utilize this process for at-home medication refills.
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Participatory Workshop
In the workshop, we had our participant talk through and act out different scenarios from which we discovered traveling was especially a pain when having to keep track of multiple medications.
Research and insights
Building off of previous user research, I conducted 5 more interviews with individuals taking multiple medications and created a market analysis of existing pill taking apps. Along with insights gained from the interviews, I also recognized evaluated patterns within existing apps and took note of the pros and cons of their user flow.
With these findings, design guidelines were created to use as criteria to adhere to while designing wireframes and later for evaluation during user testing:
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Build community
To encourage accountability, the product should strive to aid in building a community of support.
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Give control
The user should feel they control at every stage of the PillPal. It should feel easy to adopt into one’s life.
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Be visually clear and consistent
Health is personal. PillPal should feel like it can be trusted and reliable.
Design guidelines
Along with sketches and wireframes, I created a style guide to use for the final product with the goal of evoking emotions of trust and reliability as well as ensuring I stay visually consistent. I wanted the product to do so without having a traditionally sterile health aesthetic as I had seen most apps on the market do, hence the use of warm colors. I also created a logo for fun and to use within the app to make it feel more tangible.
Creating a style guide
After a rough prototype, I did some usability tests with 3 individuals who were currently taking medication to evaluate the product.
User testing developments
Bringing more visibility to decisions that are made
After an action, it wasn't clear that there was a result so I made sure to indicate that visually with a notification bar where new items would appear.
Providing efficiency in prescription refill
There are cases where multiple refills are being requested at once. Users shouldn’t have to input repetitive information more than once.
Bringing more visibility to decisions that are made
After an action, it wasn't clear that there was a result so I made sure to indicate that visually with a notification bar where new items would appear.
ERICA'S DIGEST
Although the beginning of this project is outdated, I attach a lot of value to it in helping me navigate the design process and self-discipline.
There's a huuuuge saturation of pill reminder apps so it was a challenging brief to figure out how can a new one stand out. I really enjoyed exploring some micro-interactions through prototyping as well as creating a visual language unlike medical products.