Market Research (Secondary)

Conducting market research will provide a foundation for understanding who the customer is and better appreciate the topic at hand. Furthermore, it would assist with creating the provisional personas and help with formulating appropriate interview questions during the primary research process. This section covers the background, statistics and facts, as well as demographics of individuals who are at greater risk of long-haul COVID.

Provisional Personas (Secondary)

After determining the target demographic through my market research, I was ready to create provisional personas. I was able to determine that millennials and baby boomers would be the primary users of this app based on the information gathered. I determined the goals and pain points of these demographics, which would allow me to better empathize with each and recruit individuals to interview that would fall under each category. In this case, the working millennials and retired baby boomers would be the primary target demographic for the COVID wellness app.

Empathy Map

Synthesizing the information gained from my interview transcripts was the next step. I referenced the transcripts to determine patterns, which I then clustered into different groups, and finally translated into insights and needs. These needs enabled me to have a deeper understanding of the user persona. Four insights and needs were developed for this particular project.

Insights

1. 4 out of 5 COVID survivors had a variety of long-haul symptoms that impacted their daily life

2. 5 out of 5 COVID survivors received assistance from others in order to cope with their COVID symptoms

3. 3 out of 5 COVID survivors refer to a healthcare provider for their COVID knowledge

4. 4 out of 5 COVID survivors felt that the disease influenced their Quality of Life

Define & Ideate

POV & HMW Questions

After creating the empathy map and persona, I had insights and needs that could translate into POV statements and How Might We (HMW) Questions. This process involved first translating the statements into POV statements from the perspective of Jordan, our persona, and then translating the statements into HMW questions. This process enables us to better empathize and appreciate Jordan’s perspective and the issues at-hand. The last column, HMW Questions, is the bridge to both the brainstorming process as well as the define phase.

Business & User Goals

After the brainstorming process was complete, I could then focus on creating a venn diagram of the business and user goals. I wanted to then utilize the project brief to extract the business goals, determine the user goals based on the persona, and establish the similarities between both. This process enabled me to determine which features to prioritize. In this particular case, one discovery was the mutual goal of addressing long-haul COVID symptoms, and for this to be strongly considered when creating the product feature roadmap.

App Map

While referring to my product feature roadmap, I created an app map that had both parent and child screens in order to have a better understanding of the layout of the app. This was a precursor to the wireframing process and also serves as a reference when creating task flows. For this COVID wellness app, I was able to determine that parent screens of a forum board, home page, and news section would exist. The forum board would have discussion topics that COVID survivors could discuss such as the Quality of Life After COVID. The home page would have the COVID-friendly support group meetups, which would comprise of both outdoor and online activities. Finally, the news section would contain a number of articles that would be written by healthcare professionals.

User Flow

After completing the task flows, I combined them using Figma and created a user flow in order to demonstrate the different pathways that Jordan could take. I considered several different avenues that Jordan may undergo, including whether he would want to view more articles under the news page and whether he would want to view more topics under the forum board page. This is a much more comprehensive visualization of all the different possibilities.

Mid-fidelity Wireframes

After creating the low-fidelity wireframes, I wanted to digitize what I had drawn by creating midfidelity wireframes. These were created in black and white in order to focus on the content first prior to the visual design elements. For this COVID Wellness App, I wanted to ensure that the meetups were easily accessible and organized and that the bulletin board and news page followed an existing schema, or mental model, of how such pages would be expected to look like. Keeping these elements in mind, I was able to create the midfidelity wireframes prior to moving on to the high fidelity wireframes. Examples of the different screens are presented below.

 Usability Testing

Prior to conducting the usability test, I began by creating a usability test plan in order to lay out the objectives, test methodology, test methods, participants and tasks. This provides a structure and understanding of what will be executed, how the test will be conducted, what metrics would be captured, and what tasks the users would complete. For this circumstance, I am expecting there to be a 100% completion rate because the set-up of the app was created in reference to apps of similar services. The error-free rate of 90% was determined because it is not a fully functional prototype.

Usability Test Plan

Objectives

1. Determine the user's ability to complete four user scenarios
2. Identify user's pain points
3. Determine each user's thought processes while completing tasks 4. Improve design functionality based on feedback

Test Methodology

Evaluative Research

Test Methods

Think aloud usability test. This usability test will be conducted via Zoom and/or Skype. There will be an audio recording of each user stating aloud their thought processes while completing each task.

Participants

Number of participants: 5-10
Age range: 25-40, 55-74 years old Gender: Female and male

User traits: Has had COVID

Tasks

Scenario 1: You are curious about what comments are on the “Quality of Life After COVID-19” bulletin board.

• Task: View the Quality of Life after COVID-19 bulletin board

Scenario 2: You want to receive notifications for when users comment on forum post

• Task: Turn on push notifications

Scenario 3: You have been wanting to stay up-to-date with COVID news and realize you can use the Coping with COVID app to do so.

• Task: View the Coping with Long-haul Fatigue article

Scenario 4: You heard there is a Support Group Meetup that you can attend through the Coping with COVID app and you are interested in attending.

• Task: Sign up for the Coping with COVID Support Group

Moodboard

After making the appropriate adjustments to the wireframes based on the input received, it was now time to create the look and feel of the app. This was done through a Pinterest Moodboard, which enabled me to establish key attributes for the app: modern, unique, original, innovative, and helpful. I then associated these attributes to the color, typography, imagery and logo. This allowed me to establish a brand identity and was a precursor to the style tile.