January 2021, Self-Driven Project

Overview

My 83 year old grandmother lives all alone in her apartment and this has been a concern for my family. She frequents the hospital by taking the public transportation and everyone is on edge when she isn’t accompanied by anyone. Inspired by my personal concerns, I did more research on caregivers or guardians and found that there has been a lack of attention for old adults.

We are living in an era in which the elder population is constantly growing with longer life expectancies, while the birth rate is constantly dropping. The change in demographics indicates that the elders are in need of more attention, since their visits to the hospital will only increase. I initiated this project as an opportunity to be a voice for them. I designed SILVSOUL, a mobile app that effectively matches older adults who seek caregivers that could guide their hospital visits.

User Research

I interviewed 3 individuals who are 65+ at a public hospital to investigate their needs and concerns. Additionally, to have a comprehensive understanding of what creates effective matching, I interviewed 2 nurses and 2 students volunteer-working at a hospital to gain more insight on their experiences and frustrations with their jobs with older adults. For this case study, I conducted qualitative interviews to seek for deeper insider inputs rather than quantitative surveys.

Insight 1 — Not ALL older adults are knowledgable with app usage

Older adults tend to struggle with new technology. 42% of individuals over 65 own a smartphone. Although the rates are increasing, there is no guarantee that they will not experience any difficulties with app usage.

After the interviews, I thought it would be more ideal and likely to target the guardians/children of the older adults, as we could imagine a son using the app for his 65 year old mother. But this does not mean the app does not target older adults. It’s just that the target audience would span a wider range.

Insight 2 — The core of finding the right match is proper filtering

According to the students and nurses I interviewed, it is significant that they know the specific health conditions of their patients. Besides, they also have to grasp other basic information like their preferences or appointment dates. That’s why they observe the older adults over time, and strive to ask questions.

This seems easy at first but once transferred into an app, there is no time nor room for a long list of questions. The design needs to cut down as many steps as possible and only provide essential questions.

User Personas

User Personas are placed in real life scenarios with each individual’s situation and concern revealed so that it is better for readers to empathize with.

Investigating What Solutions to Implement

After the detailed insights I secured from my user research, I decided to pay full attention to:

• how target audience should consider both older adults and their guardians
• filtering for effective matches through emphasis on health vs. profession

My original plan for this case study was to make a single app for both older adults and caregivers, but quickly concluded that it wasn’t possible. Planning out sketches and notes, I noticed the desired information on each interfaces are vastly different, which meant that they had to be separated into 2 apps.

Instead, I decided to focus on older adult perspective, and especially focus on the main homepage for what old people users need. It came down to a list of:

Creating Hierarchy

Market Research

Because SILVSOUL is a whole new system, I was not able to seek a direct competitor in the market. Instead, I absorbed how other apps implemented certain tools and features.

Matches

For effective matching amongst older adults and caregivers, a certain amount of personal information is required for a profile so that the matching system could filter the similar traits. But how much information is required? And what are the standards?

I looked into dating apps as well as rider apps, and studied what kinds of questions they ask users. Tinder and Uber were the apps that I thought were good representations of each category.

Name, gender, date of birth, profile picture, and location are basic information that are asked in most apps today. I also thought these were necessities for SILVSOUL as well.

I added a “disabilities” section since the app focuses on health, and the caregivers have a right to know about their condition. It would even be more effective to match older adults prone to certain conditions with caregivers on specific professions, since both are achieving their goals at SILVSOUL.

USC Health Center

Although not the most UI-friendly, the USC Health Center’s mobile website offers an appointment management system that displays the essential content when requesting an appointment at the health center.

SILVSOUL is not an appointment managing app, but still requires users to inform us on appointment dates and health precautions. The USC Health Center’s interface displays a detailed and professional process, which SILVSOUL could briefly study for the appointments page.

Traveling Apps

Again, SILVSOUL does not implement an appointment request page, but there will be a page to label the appointment date on the app, so that the caregivers know when their schedules will take place. I looked into traveling apps like Expedia for inspiration on frames with dates and times.

Expedia executed a large calendar, and also operated the current design trend of glassmorphism to the background. The large scale of the content seemed to supply facile navigation for users, and I thought perhaps applying this into SILVSOUL will greatly benefit older adults with deteriorating eye sight.

Final Design

Acknowledgement: I did not create a prototyping video through Invision or Origami, because I thought that the user flow is self-explanatory just by looking at the screen/sequences itself. Thus, I thought it was unnecessary.

Design Iterations

Adjusting the Hierarchy

I eliminated two frames from my user flow during my design process. I had to eliminate A because, as explained earlier, including both roles in one app required making two totally different interfaces. For B, after considering the guardians of older adults as one part of our target audience, the question had to broaden from pinpointing grandma/grandpa to gender: male/female.

Also, I took out the microphone icon, because that was originally meant for older adults who had trouble hearing. Now that SILVSOUL directs for younger guardians too, the tool was removed.

The sequence of the “request match” process was also adjusted from occasion→ appointment →suggested matches to appointment →occasion →suggested matches. I thought it was necessary because I expected a broader and more important category to come first, which in this case seemed like the date and time preferably than the occasion.

Homepage

As the homepage includes many features and tools, it was also the most complex aspect of the project. I dedicated the most time on this page.

A. My first draft is very problematic. The main issue was the existence of the menu bar on the bottom, while not knowing where certain features should be located. Also, since SILVSOUL’s initial goal is to match, I thought that the request match button is equitable at that spot where users reach the most.

B. During my other drafts, I lost focus on the apps motives. Buttons like “doctors” are not imperative on the interface itself, since the app is not a medical appointment managing app.

C. This is my final outcome after an extremely long and complex design process, although not all could not be shown on this post. I reorganized the positions of only the essential features. I also preferred using icons over illustrations, because the consistency conveys users to find certain tools they need more straightforwardly.

Navigating Appointment

Date and Time, Calendar, Scaling, Location decisions that assist easy guidance

My final outcome for this page is Frame C, where the date comes on top of the time. Date of the year is a larger range compared to time, which is why I thought it was a correct decision in terms of the UX. Frame A was my first draft, and the main issue with this was the scaling. The calendar and slots are too small, that users cannot navigate.

What I Learned-Controlling my Design Process

This is a part of my portfolio, and this is my case study — not a to-do-list

This is my second case study (all self-driven), and since I had no experience or knowledge with the first one, I followed an outline. From user research, persona, flow, wire-framing, prototyping, etc, I studied the pattern as a beginner. Now that this is my second case study, I gained more stance on my design process, and I was able to eliminate some procedures that I thought were unnecessary.

For example, I did not include a wireframing sketch for this case study. It isn’t because I don’t know how to create it, but I have my own reasons behind why. I came to realize that wireframing is old-fashioned and it also did not satisfy my personal design practice. I prefer working with high fidelity screens because there is better visual ideation, which is why I jump straight from my hierarchical brainstorming and sketches to my digital tools.

Thank you for taking your time to read through! Reach me at amandajh@usc.edu

Case study: Safe guidance to your local hospital was originally published in Bootcamp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ensuring Privacy through a Lock Feature, with many more

November 2020, Self-Driven Project

Overview

As an international college student who lives overseas, I use WhatsApp religiously to talk to my professors and colleagues in the US. International calls and text messages being free, with tools functioning just like any other mobile chatting app got me wondering why some people around me prefer other chatting apps over WhatsApp.

However, despite WhatsApp’s promise to ensure user privacy and security, the app lacks front-end solutions that prove its confidentiality. In addition, WhatsApp generally seems user-unfriendly and I as a user felt frustrated.

In November 2020, I set out to conduct a case study on WhatsApp and identify how it could be improved. My initial hypothesis was: If WhatsApp created more front-end solutions on privacy, it would help more users feel secure when using the app.

Problem — Technology has Low Credibility

WhatsApp is originally known for being strict with privacy through an end-to-end encryption set up into its system, which means that the texts can only be seen by the user and the other party. But this system is only engraved in the system, while lacking external privacy features that are visible to users. If content leaking is the concern the app wants to focus on, it lacks those additional features that accentuate the reputation, leaving users to worry.

Solution — Let Users Trust WhatsApp

Today, society is undergoing dilemmas on how technology invades our privacy. Therefore allowing the users to manage their privacy and personal space to a certain extent could reassure them that their experience on WhatsApp is safe. Add front-end approaches covering privacy, visible on screen. The features to implement will be measured later in the case study.

User Research

Over a span of 5 days, I released a survey link on my Instagram page to investigate the real world opinions on WhatsApp’s image. Survey questions were a mixture of multiple choice questions and free response questions. This is what I collected.

Participants: 55 people

1. Users care about eyes from the outer world (external privacy)

“I don’t want to worry about people taking my phone, easily accessing my chats.”

2. Users want to feel emotionally secure with app (internal privacy)

“I still prefer emailing my professors even though it seems old school. Honestly, WhatsApp doesn’t give me a formal, official, or private impression. What if I get hacked or something.”

3. Users prefer quick and easy interactions

iMessage does not require additional steps to login, but WhatsApp just has a lot of steps which should be eliminated.”

4. Users seek for extra features and tools

“I chose to use KakaoTalk since theres more features/options: sending gifts, turning off notifications, etc. I guess KakaoTalk is more convenient in general.”

5. Users are unhappy with WhatsApp’s UI

“Don’t like how it looks visually. Makes me not want to use unorganized apps.”

User Personas

Exploring What Type of Feature to Implement

Discussing the opportunity areas, I came up with solution spaces and voted on what type of feature would best suit the problem. I decided on:

1. Creating a lock for selected chats
2. Reducing the number of pages through a clean homepage

Since my initial goal was to increase a sense of privacy through a front-end approach, I thought locking chats would be the key feature that represents the initial goal. I also thought that by doing so, a clearer image of WhatsApp could be originated, that could possibly bring in new types of users.

The idea of building the process of setting up passcodes may be an exhausting cognitive load, which is why it is important to make the steps as simple as possible. Cutting down the number of slides is a solution to blend in with the locked chat feature.

Wire-framing

Market Research

I looked into the two most common chatting apps people around me use: KakaoTalk and Facebook Messenger. In my opinion, if these two apps were aimed towards casual socializing, WhatsApp is a different category for being a slightly more professional, private, but casual mobile chatting app.

Swiping someone on the chat list supplies additional features that could be customized on a certain user. Messenger offers settings, notifications, and delete. Kakaotalk offers favorites, pin to top, and notifications.

The notifications option is functional and is also closely tied to privacy, since users could manipulate what messages to show and not show up on their screens. This option is definitely something WhatsApp could adopt.

Apps with Passcodes

Banking Apps were what first appeared on my mind when I pictured a passcode. I studied the slide sequences and instructions for CitiBank and Bank of America. I also studied the regular Iphone passcodes.

A key difference I spotted was how the Iphone passcode page had one less step than the other apps. When the page to fill in a code or a digit appears, user is told to press on the first empty space until the keyboard of numbers and letters pop up. Basically, users need to take one more action to enter the code. But since the Iphone already implemented a large keyboard on with the empty digits, users could navigate through the process more quickly.

Final Design

I followed this UI Kit to make sure that my high fidelity prototype is as accurate as possible.

The current UI of WhatsApp is unbelievably inconsistent with Messenger or Instagram even though they are under the same Facebook umbrella. Designs are dull and old-fashioned, and most importantly, lacking features.

Final User Flow

Prototyping

Design Iterations

To construct the WhatsApp homepage/Chats, I had to list down what elements I would need to execute the app’s features.

Visual Design

How might we use visual design to help the “setting password” process seem less complicated for users?

Option B and D were from the earlier drafts of my designs. I eliminated B and D right away because they are both under a system of targeting a certain user to lock, as it turns away from the user flow of setting a password through settings.

Option A and C are both very convenient in terms of saving time and simplifying the process, but ultimately I chose option A. The buttons of the keypad are large and tidy, producing comfort for the users when tapping the screen with their fingers. The scale of option A, especially after putting all these options next to each other and comparing them, allows a straightforward navigation.

I explored where the “locked” icon could be located after locking a certain chat. I thought Option A would be the best fit, since the human eye subconsciously stares at names first, and the icon is right next to the name.

I explored how I could organize the different chat categories. I discovered that Option B fit WhatsApp’s visual language the best. Minimal but easy to comprehend and distinguish.

What I Learned- Seek for Advice

As a design student, I am very used to experiencing critique sessions whether in class or at work, and I am positive about designs improving more rapidly when opinions are tossed around.

But since this was my ever first case study, I felt shy about presenting my work at first. Because I was eager to improve my designs, I knew I had to search for feedback. I found hearing words from the user’s perspective being very effective when editing my work. I learned that instead of taking advices personally, asking for advice could become my new daily design habit.

Thank you for taking your time to read through! Reach me at amandajh@usc.edu

Case study: WhatsApp redesign was originally published in Bootcamp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.