Project Goals

• Conduct user research to learn about user pain points and produce a mid-fidelity prototype

• Facilitate one round of usability test sessions and make revisions to present to stakeholders

Understanding the problem

After conducting secondary research in the problem space, I already began to notice themes and understand the primary user. The next step was to talk to real women and learn their motivations, pain points and goals.

After creating an interview guide, which encompassed 20 open ended questions, I facilitated 3 interviews with the primary user: millennial women, 24-34 years old, who were:

• Educated

• Living in the U.S.

• Familiar with technology

• and who had given birth within the last 5 years

Gathering Insights

Using an Affinity Map, I analyzed and synthesized the secondary research and interview results into key themes/insights. I chose the most compelling theme to frame the “How Might We” statement for this project.

How might we help prepare expecting mothers for the postpartum experience so they feel empowered and knowledgable during the fourth trimester.

The chosen theme and HMW statement would ultimately drive the direction of the design solution.

User Persona

Next, I developed a user persona to support future design decisions. This persona is based on the key themes found through the affinity mapping process. The user persona represents the target user group and will play an integral part during the design process. Designers and developers can refer back to the persona to make sure every decision aligns with her motivations and needs.

User Stories & Epics

Using the persona, Shannon Olsen, I began creating a list of User Stories. These stories were meant to address her pain points and goals for this digital solution and, ultimately, what tasks she wants to accomplish. After writing 20 stories, I categorized them into Epics (themes) to better understand where I should focus my design efforts in the next phase.

Epic of Focus & Task Flow Diagram

I chose the most prominent epic to focus on for this design solution. I refined the stories in the Search epic and chose one story as the main task flow for this project. The task flow diagram displays the end-to-end journey of completing a task.

Epic of Focus: Search

User Story of Focus: As an expecting mother, I want to search for postpartum information and products that are approved by a healthcare professional so that I can purchase safe products and save credible information.

UI Inspiration Board

Before getting into exploratory and solution sketching, I created a UI inspiration board on InVision. The purpose of this board was to generate some ideas about the functionality and what the interface would look like, based on Shannon’s motivations and pain points.

• She doesn’t want to feel overwhelmed.

• Her main goal is to gather information and feel prepared.

• She wants to connect with other mothers to feel validated.

• She values a personalized experience.

UI Inspiration Board & Sketches

Sketches

Next, I began exploratory sketching, jotting down ideas and pulling from the inspiration board. I took the best ideas/sketches from there and began solution sketching. The sketches reflect the task flow that was chosen upon in the previous phase and I chose the best sketch to move forward with prototyping in Figma.

Initial Prototype & Usability Testing

After finalizing the task flow and sketches, I created an initial greyscale mid-fidelity prototype of the design solution in Figma. The next step was to conduct one round of Usability Testing with 5 participants to gather feedback on the design and make revisions where necessary. I developed a testing script and a set of tasks for the user to complete with the prototype.

Usability Test Results

During this initial round of usability testing, I measured success by how many participants were able to complete each task. Overall, it was successful with a 5/5 success rate for each session.

Key revisions to be made:

• Re-label the Community tile on the home screen because users were confused as to where this would lead them

• Edit content labels on Saved screen for consistency purposes

• Bold the navigation icons when user is on that screen so they can visually see where they are in the application

Next Steps

• Begin to develop high fidelity wireframes.

• Work with content authors to polish the content and copy.

• Conduct a second round of usability testing with the high fidelity prototype.

  Key Learnings

• The participant criteria for initial user interviews is important to narrow down. This is a crucial part of the research phase and sets the foundation for the following design decisions.