Apple Health App. A user experience case study designing a solution for improving Apple Health App.
Started on: January 11, 2023
Last updated on: February 24, 2023
link to the final prototype: https://xd.adobe.com/view/aa681140-27c0-4f36-b586-b3ef56ad8522-ff3b/
What is Apple Health APP?
The Apple Health App was created to help organize your important health information and make it easy to access in a central and secure place.
Introduction
This case study will go over background, design process, design draft, survey questions and participants responses, heuristic markup, key results and success criteria, target audience, deliverables, design tools, sketches and wireframe, usability test and validation.
Background
Apple Health App is the health informatics mobile app that allows customers to gather and organize their medical data. The purpose of this project is to redesign certain features in Apple Health App in iPhone to make it user-friendly and to take advantage of data via QR codes. My target audiences are Apple users, potential classmates or other acquaintances and friends. I chose this App because it is free and available in all iPhones.
Design Process
Improving Apple Health App is an individual project which allowed me to plan and direct each step of the design thinking process as a UX strategic design student. I started the project with general research first to understand my potential users, the complexity of their needs, and motivations. This research helped me to identify Apple Health App problems and identify what are the main points that I must focus on. During the developing process, I moved through feedback loop (build, Heuristic Markup, survey, and interactive) making design improvements and increasing the usability of my prototype based on usability test, and a/b test to finally deliver my finished product with some developed features.
Design Draft
Although Apple Health App has a nice and a clear design, I believe there is a room for design improvement to make the App user friendly by adding some new features. I started with listing the features that I want to add and tried to connect these features with their next pages to ensure user engagement in an easy way. I used low fidelity sketches as a starting point, then wireframed it via Figma. After that, I made a clickable prototype using Adobe XD application to create interactive prototype by connecting pages together. The images that I used in my design brief are from the actual Apple Health App, and I took screen shots and Photoshop them to illustrate the features that are intended to improvement the design. Also, I used same features that Apple uses (i.e., green activation button). In addition, I used Adobe Illustrator and Canva to create some icons that I used to identified some of the new features in the App. In general, users are always looking for easy way to do things to save time. For instance, having QR code for personal info could encourage users to use this feature to easily check-in for medical or laboratory appointment. Furthermore, the QR code of the medications list will be beneficial for the user to share their actual medication information with their providers during normal doctor visit and will be handy during emergency. I believe if this App will be developed in a larger scope, the clinics and the doctors will be willing to educate their patients to use this feature. Besides that, I believe my design will be more effective by adding the medication category. Users would love to find and select medication with less clicks rather than typing. These categories will let them pick which type of medications they will add. In addition, I believe adding the feature of goal is necessary to the users. It might be necessary to the user to follow a specific goal such as maintaining certain weight or losing weight.
Survey and Interviews
I distributed a usability survey to gather feedback about Apple Health App and some of the features that I would like to add to see if others will be interested in these features or not. The survey was distributed electronically and shared with classmates and friends. I created the survey via Survey Monkey website and collecting data on January 17th, 2023.
My first two questions were about usage and tracking information to see which information is more important to the users and if they are even tracking their health. 60% of the users are tracking their fitness in Apple Health App while 30% are tracking their information sometimes and 10% are not using and tracking their fitness.
Figure 1: Q1 - Apple Health App Usage
Figure 2: Q2 - Fitness Tracking
Then I wanted to know how easy it is to use Apple Health App. 60% of participants found it easy to use while 30% of participants say not easy to use and only 10% of participants are not using the App. My main point was to know how I can help the users to find what they are looking for in an easy way.
Figure 3: Q3 - Ease of use
I believe if I add an easy checking-in feature such as QR code to the app, it will encourage more people to use the app. I am planning to have two types of QR code. One QR code is only for profile page that helps the user to check-in at hospitals, and clinics faster with no need to manually fill out all the documents. Another QR code would include all medication that can be privately shared between the users and their doctors and nurses. It could be handy as well in case of emergency.
Figure 4: Q4 - Tracking Chronic Conditions
Though this project, I want to highlight and develop Apple Health App and make it not only easy to use, but as a tool to protect the users’ lives. By highlighting few features that are important to the users, it will make it much easier for user specially those who have chronic conditions or interested in features such as emergency contact feature, and medication reminder.
Figure 5: Q5 - Survey Responses about Emergency Contact Feature
I found out that not only the users who have chronic condition, but even some users that are not tracking anything would like to have at least medication reminder feature. 80% of participants would like to have emergency contact feature. These features could be a key to motivate new users to use the App.
Figure 6: Q6 - Survey Responses about Medication Reminder Feature
I wanted to know what the main function is and what are the users’ goals for using Apple Health App and how often the users do use the App.
Figure 7: Q7 - Survey Responses about Main Function
Figure 8: Q8 - Survey Responses about User Goals
Figure 9: Q9 - Survey Responses about Workout
Figure 10: Q10 - Statistic about Group Age
Heuristic Markup
I selected a heuristic markup as my research method. While Apple health App design does have great features and nice icons that represent the intended function, there are many weaknesses in the design. Figure 11 includes several screen shots of Apple health App in iPhone. This assesses the basic quality of the app for potential opportunity for improvement.
Figure 11: A Heuristic Markup of Apple Health App
The heuristic markup analysis provides a great visualization about the design intend and how these new proposed features would be laid out within the existing Apple health App design. The markup shows that these key features are most likely would enhance the current design and make it more advanced.
Key Results & Success Criteria
Apple Health App already includes nice features, and it is friendly to use, but there is always room for improvement. I think this app will need to include some other features for the purpose of easy use. By adding QR code for personal information and activate the feature of adding this QR code to your wallet, it will make clinic/hospital check-in process easy for the user. This can give hopes to increase user adoption and improve overall usability of the app. It is important to give a nice first impression for first time users of the new features. Another feature that can be developed is the “medication” list. Currently, the user must type every single medicine. I am planning to add categories for medicine with a drop-down menu that will make enter the information faster and easy to use. In addition, I can add QR code for the medicine and this will have access for all medicines and can be shared with doctors and nurses and used in case of emergency. I would like to add goals with other subcategories like gain or loss weight and build muscle with plan diet for each. Lastly, I would like to add Emergency contact feature to make an emergency call in case of unusual heart rate with some options, like contact emergency person, call 911 or both. This last feature could save a lot of lives. The survey responses about these new features show a great interest in having these features. For instance, 100% of participants would like to see medication reminder feature.
Target Audience
The target audience for this project are individuals who have never used Apple Health App (first time users). The typical users for this app are individuals who have Apple iPhone.
Deliverables
Tangible artifacts for this project include:
• Wireframes, sketches and/or mockups of Apple Health App
• Clickable prototype in Figma or Adobe XD
Design Tools
It has been decided that the project will use XD Adobe for wireframes and prototype and other possible programs such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Microsoft Office Apps such as Word or PowerPoint for in-house communication and presentation purposes.
Sketches
Figure 12: Sketches
Wireframe Design
Figure 13: Wireframe
Usability-Protocol-Test
Testing and Validation Report
Test and validation are important part of the project. In my opinion testing and validation give the designer a better view if he/she is on the right path. Throughout the process of testing and validation, the designer discovers what is working and what is off base and need to be re-worked for a better solution. For the remote participants, I started by sharing my screen with the participant and walked through the slideshow shown above. I provided a brief introduction and background about Apple Health App. I decided to start with a brief introduction of the Apple Health App and the purpose of the project to provide a general idea to the participant who is not familiar with any of the new technology. I choose the Five-Second method to get some interesting information from the participants. This method fits my design to test the hierarchy of the page. The information that I collected form the participants represent what might the users experience in the future when they are testing or using the App. As a designer, I would like to highlight certain things that we want the users to catch first. This method provided good indicators for how users really experience my design. After sharing the clickable prototype of the Apple Health App for 5 seconds, I asked the following questions:
1. What do you remember seeing on the Browse page?
Four participants out of four captured the colorful icons first then noticing “Health Categories”. The participants here noticed exactly what I want them to see first which is the icons. The simple, and colorful icons are a visual way to send a message. Especially if they are skimming quickly in the phone. It is an easy way to guide them to their task.
2. Can you tell me what you think about the overall purpose of the App?
All participants recognized the purpose of the App which is about health. When I asked each one individually how were you able to recognize it, they either noticed by the title or by one of the health icons for body, goal, and medication. In this question, the participants proofed that I am on the right track. They got the message that I want them to understand.
3. What impression did you get from Apple Health App?
Most participants are familiar with the App or use similar App, but with different functions, so they are familiar of how to drive through and get to the task. One participant is not familiar with the App because he doesn’t use iPhone at all. All my participants are between age 23-40, but I am not sure if this prototype is favorable for elders. For actual user experience project in my career, I would test more colors and icons. After sharing some of my power point slides that I prepared with the participants, I shared the link of clickable prototype of Apple Health App with the participants, and I asked them to test the design to see if they can easily use it or if they would straggle with it. After that, I moved to the usability test questionaries to get their feedback. Results are provided below.
Figure 14: Testing and Validation Report
Closing
Overall users enjoyed the experience of being able to test Apple Health App with new features. they liked being part of the process and see the final prototype and test it. During my usability test I conducted with 4 participants, I gathered some great insights to make my product more user-friendly. That being said, there is still more room to improve, and I am just getting my product off the ground.
Next steps and learnings
My next step is to reach out via online forms and other social media to get in touch with developers and try to arrange some meetings to share my ideas. I will try to convince them how these new features are easy to use and will save the users’ lives. These features will be user-friendly and save the user’s time as well as will be handy in case of emergency. I think my final case study will show all the work that completed in a short time and will give the stakeholders an idea to recognize and develop these features in a real world.
