Springboard

Assure App

Empower women with a better experience on birth control.

Project Brief

Assure is an app designed to empower women with a better experience on birth control.

With Assure, women can manage their side effects through data tracking and analyzing, learn the mechanisms behind each method in an innovative way, access the most credible and current information, and understand the process deeply through real experiences.

Duration: 12 weeks
Key Skills: Design Research, Ideation, Information Architecture, Sketching, Wireframing, UI Design, Prototyping and Usability Test
Tools: Figma, Miro, Invision, Illustrator

Insights

Identify your unique side effects patterns and be prepared. View and take precaution for unusual symptoms.

Selfcare

Easy and quick access to the most current, credible, and reliable information on birth control. Learn more about a birth control product by reading others’ reviews.

Track

Monitor side effects by logging daily cycle health data into the system.
It’s quick, simple, and intuitive.

1. HMW guide women to better manage contraceptive side effects?
2. HMW deliver contraceptive-related information that is current, credible, and accessible?
3. HMW help women make better decisions on contraceptive usage?

The project was originally driven by my personal experiences in birth control. As a woman, I started to use contraceptives with the confusion of how different methods would work on my body; I endured side effects with poor guidance; I ended up with frustrations.

For over 64.5% of women aged 15-49 in the United States, especially those who are underinsured, birth control is a “trial and error” experience that can lead to anxiety and depression.

Motivation

My process

Is there really a problem? Are there greater opportunities in solving this problem? With those questions in mind, I conducted secondary research to grasp the problem, followed by a competitive analysis to know about opportunities. 

After getting myself immersed in the problem, I reach out to potential users to learn their experiences, needs, goals, pain points, and etc.

Secondary Research

I began by reading articles, interviews, and white papers to get an initial understanding of women’s issues with contraceptives contextually.

It takes a few times to get it right. (Source: www.healthline.com)

Key takeaways:
  • Lack of information is widely shared among women, especially on the recent-developed contraceptive methods.

  • Birth control is indeed a trial-and-error experience. It’s an endless guessing game.

  • Because of the guessing game, women often struggled to select the right birth control method that works best for their bodies and lifestyles.

To my surprise, the problem exists to a significant extent, I wonder if there is already a solution on the market. So I conducted a heuristic analysis. I found similar products: Spot on, Cycles, and Glow.

While those platforms are focusing on certain aspects of women’s productive health, I concluded that there is no existing solution dedicated to helping women overcome the fear of the unknown of the birth control process. To further understand the problem, I reached out to those who are suffering from negative birth control experiences.

Competitive Analysis

Survey

To validate the assumptions that I made on the problem, and to verify if the problems really exist, I sent out a screen survey to social media, online forms, and my community groups, the goal is to reach out to those who have experiences with contraception and are willing to share. 57 responses at the end.

Key takeaways
  • Only 35.1% (20 of 57) of respondents never had any issue when making decisions, while the rest felt clueless, lonely, and judged. 54.4% (31 of 57) respondents felt unsure about which method would best work for their body and lifestyle.
  • In terms of resources, 57.9% (33 of 57)of respondents desire other women’s shared experiences, and 56.2% (32 of 57) wish that they could have birth control-related information readily available.
  • The most widely used contraceptive methods among participants are male condoms and hormonal pills, whereas only 24.6% (14 of 57) have used (or are using) the LARCs (long-acting reversible contraception).

Interview photo was published with the consent of interviewee.

Pain points
  • “Difficult to make decisions”
    Difficult to make a decision on which type of contraception to use is the most share situation among interviewees. Even with a doctor’s consultation, there is still a lot to consider: lifestyle, cost, effectiveness, safety, medical history, and etc.
  • “How does it work?” “Is it really work?” “Picking the best out of terrible choices.”
    Some interviewees felt “unknown and unprepared” every time they started to use a certain type of contraception because they were not sure of the mechanism behind it, many were concerned about the safety of whether it would do permanent damage to their body.
  • “I hate all birth control, but still have to use them as a necessity.” “I have to go abstinence because of the side effects.”
    Many interviewees rate birth control as a “totally negative experience” because side effects can happen no matter if you are prepared or not. Some side effects are so dreadful that daily life can be affected.
  • “Sometimes when I come back from doctor’s office, I do a little reality check on the internet.”
    Discussing birth control with female friends is very helpful in parsing out the reality, many interviewees make decisions by learning from their female friends’ suggestions. Some interviewees like to research on the internet looking for advice from people in similar situations.

Interview

8 interviews were conducted with women who had experiences with birth control. Participants were recruited from social media and the local communities. Using the online platform Zoom, each session is
30 - 40 minutes.

For each interview, I start off the conversation by introducing myself and the purpose of this interview. Then I asked about their experiences in birth control, how did they make their decisions, the challenges they’ve had, how did they handle it, and whether or not they share their birth control experiences with other people.

To keep myself focused on the user-centric goal, I used four methods to synthesis my research findings: affinity mapping, empathy mapping, personas, and HMW problem statement (which will be included in the design section).

Affinity Map

Now by understanding the pain points, I’ve had an idea of who my users will be. I further organized my notes into three empathy maps; each map summarized a specific user type by what they say, do, think, and feel.

Empathy Map

Personas

I created three personas based on the data extracted from the interview and survey. The personas define three user types with distinctive needs, goals, pain points, and motivations.

In the previous research phase, I documented all the findings and have seen patterns in the problem. In order to get a clear picture, I re-watched my interview recordings and made notes on pain points, quotes, behaviors, and opinions. I downloaded the notes from those videos and post them on my wall with color-coding, I then sorted those notes into “clusters” of trends.

Throughout the ideation process, I used divergent thinking to drive multiple solutions, sketched out those solutions, made design decisions, and wrote user stories that tell the experience.

Initial Sketch

In the previous phase, I have had some vague ideas on the solution. Keeping those ideas in mind, I expand those ideas, brainstormed a couple more, and sketched them out.

User Stories

To keep the process as lean as possible, I put myself into my personas’ positions and wrote down their needs as the key functions that will be included in the platform. I differentiate their need by MVPs (minimum viable products) and 2nd release so that I can keep myself focused on the goals.

The information architecture includes a site map, user flows, and wireframes. It’s created to define a clear hierarchy of my application.

Site Map

To keep myself focused on the core features that touch users’ pain points, I identified three red routes from which users can achieve the goals I created from the user stories. I found that creating the user flow before getting into wireframes helped me better emphasize with the users by solving problems from their standpoint.

Red Route Sketch

Wireframes + Wire Flows

Using the user stories, I visualized the connections among the key features by creating a site map. The site map also helped my ideation process later on by providing a strong structure.

After ideas were settled down, I created Lo-fi wireframes to map out the actual products’ content without being influenced by typography, images, and colors. I combined the wireframes with my three red route user flows into wire flows, so that I can better understand users’ interaction with the product.

I added onboarding as the 4th red route here because I think for a sensitive subject like contraception, it’s important to gently guide users through their first interaction with the app.

User Flow

At this point, I’ve had tons of ideas on my mind, but I decided to take it slow and draw them on paper screen by screen. The idea of sketching at this step is to generate as many ideas as I can (2-4 ideally), and write down opportunities for critique.

To build an appealing and engaging experience for users, I started off by creating a mood board that reflects users’ needs. I then created a style guide with UI language that aligns with those needs. The style guide went through several iterations during the usability testing phase.

Moodboard

Since the experience can be quite stressful and painful, “calm”, “gentle”, “loving”, and “empowering” are what I want to achieve for the color palette. I chose the spiritual dark purple color Spanish Violet and two pinkish colors Kobi and Blush because I want to add a sense of femininity to the experience.

Hi-Fi Screens

How might we deliver contraceptive-related information that is current, credible, and accessible?

How might we guide women to better manage contraceptive
side effects?

The Hi-Fi mockup is built upon wireframes following the style guide I created. At this stage, the onboarding experience was also developed.

Style Guide

How might we guide women to better manage contraceptive side effects?

How might we help women make better decisions on contraceptive usage?

The mockup was quickly developed because at that point completion is more important than perfection, and I know that the best product comes from constant iteration. I arranged two rounds of usability testing over the course of three weeks, each round with 5 testers. 

I validated my assumptions, evaluated the satisfaction rate of my product, and discovered new opportunities. After the two rounds of testing, I was able to finalize my design.

Issue tracking chart