She | Her

ux/UI Design

Hanai is a technology provider enabling healthcare access and education through mobile phones - regardless of internet connection or accessibility constraints such as language, privacy, and literacy. Hanai’s products aim to be the ultimate reference point for women, offering a platform where they have curated content and access to preventative health and services that allow them to take better care of themselves.

My role

User Interviews, UI + UX Design, Prototyping

Team

Gema H Nava, Juliette Marini, Karishma Shetty, Solange Cuba, Marina Vaskina, Alex Butterbrodt

TOOLS

Figma, Adobe Illustrator

CHALLENGE

In April 2020, Hanai launched a fully localized app with tailored information on maternal health called Jiwa Ibu. It has supported 3,000+ indigenous people to date. Hanai wants to provide support through womens shared experiences from pain to pleasure in an app called She/Her. This app aims to fill the gap of information for women who need resources with regards to their sexual health.

We found that women from various ethnic communities feel unsupported regarding their sexual and reproductive health and need a platform to gain information and learn from other women’s experiences but don’t know where to go.

SOLUTION

We needed to create an accessible platform where women from various ethnic communities with varying literacy levels can share their experiences that will result in helping them make the right decisions for their sexual and reproductive health because they feel validated and empowered.

UX PROCESS

SKETCHES + LOW fidelity prototype

usability
testing

HIGH FIDELITY PROTOTYPE

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Jiwa Ibu, Aya Contigo, UNRWA and Nejjat are projects launched from non governmental organizations to provide a range of essential services including education, healthcare and emergency assistance. We did a comparative analysis based on a feature inventory among them to learn how they provided these services taking into consideration language, locations and services provided.

USER INTERVIEWS

USER #1

Age: 54
Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Language: English
Technology: Mobile phone, Zoom, wifi

USER #2

Age: 40
Location: San Francisco, CA
Language: English
Technology: Uses lots of different tech, iOS

USER #3

Age: 30
Location: Malaysia
Language: English, Tamil
Technology: Uses apple products exclusively, iOS, Macbook

USER #4

Age: 59
Location: Luxembourg
Language: English, German, French + Italian
Technology: Android, Samsung phone

USER #5

Age: 55
Location: San Francisco, CA
Language: English
Technology: Android user, Motorola, computer, no tablet

INTERVIEW GOALS

The goals of our user interviews was to understand how diverse people look for information on a health app and to see how they respond to sensitive educational content about sexual pleasure.

• Learn about how our users experiences differ when needing medical help regarding women's health.
• Find out what women do when they feel that they can not turn to anyone for help regarding their sexual health.
• Understand how comfortable women feel sharing their experiences related to sexual health.

We organized our findings from user interviews by building an affinity map. This helped us discover key takeaways from our users and identify patterns in their answers. We identified 4 behaviors and needs that all of our users experience. This guides our priorities in developing the design of the app.

I don’t know how to find support.

I want my experiences to feel validated.

I want to support women's shared experiences.

I feel frustrated by the lack of relevant information.

AFFINITY MAPPING

Through our user interviews we learned that women want their experiences to be validated and to understand what they are experiencing by reading other women's stories and learning about relevant medical information. Privacy is a priority for our users to ensure that they feel safe when using the app.

“I want to be a helping hand to other women, so please share my story.”

“I believe hearing these stories reinforces the importance of a woman’s ability to take control of her own healthcare."

“The community and culture I grew up in, women are not allowed to share their sexual experiences or health problems.”

“We were only educated about the science of sex.”

USER TAKEAWAYS

PERSONAS

After synthesizing our data from our secondary research, comparative analysis, and user interviews the team started to develop our personas. We focused on two personas. one based on our data from the user interviews and a proto persona based on our secondary research. We knew that the users we interviewed only highlighted a portion of the the users for the app. The individuals that we interviewed all have access to internet, are able to read and write and understand how to use technology. From our client we knew that this was only a segment of our user base. There is a group of users that do not have stable access to internet and that are illiterate. We developed our proto persona based on our secondary research and interviews with subject matter experts.

Developing a product for populations across 4 continents meant understanding the problem space from multiple perspectives and working within expected constraints. These constraints consisted of, location, languages, accessibility, technology, privacy and socio-cultural differences. Given that women in Tanzania do not have access to a stable internet connection, we had to rely on Subject Matter Experts (SME) and a lot of Secondary Research to identify their needs. Our secondary research included scholarly articles, research on behavioral design for women’s health and marginalized communities, as well as design thinking in other cultures to help inform our design.

31% of women in Tanzania are completely illiterate. In effect, rate of women’s health illiteracy is higher.

The design solution must consider technological limitations. All content must be hosted on the app.

The socio-cultural differences that affect how a woman seeks for healthcare providers.

SECONDARY RESEARCH

USER + TASK FLOW

SKETCHES

We took our research into a design studio practice to develop sketches of the app. We focused on the key elements that came up in our user interviews and secondary research. These key elements include an audio and microphone for vocal interaction, keeping in mind accessibility. Setting a PIN for privacy. Topic cards with image emphasis for visual aid. A stories tab for shared experiences to help women feel validated through personal experiences shared from other women. A help function for navigation assistance throughout the app, and a toggle and filter feature to ease the flow of finding information.

LOW-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE

After reviewing our sketches as a team and collectively agreeing on how each page and feature should function we built our low-fidelity prototype to use for usability testing.

USABILITY TESTING

TASK

Task 1: Sign-up and navigate to information on fungal over-growth.

‍Task 2: Navigate to a written story about pleasure.

OBJECTIVE

Users need to be able to land on the homepage within 30 seconds of opening the app. Also to be able to navigate to medical information on a specific topic and find a specific story relating to orgasms in 2 errors or less in less than 3 minutes.

For the Usability Testing we were able to work with women from the United States, Tanzania, and Malaysia. Our users have diverse backgrounds through location, experiences, and religion which provided our team with very important insights on how users from different countries and religious backgrounds would access the information in the app. Our users are curious about the world around them and their health. They are deeply committed to passing on their knowledge and wisdom to their children, encouraging them to live healthy and fulfilling lives. Users want to access resources that will help them make more informed decisions about their health and sexual pleasure.

Usability testing proved to be critical in our design process. We made iterations based on usability testing but also based on client feedback that we validated through research.

5 out of 6 users mentioned that they are more likely to search by symptom rather than the name of a condition.

4 out of 6 users went back to "Topics" to select "orgasm" rather than navigating to the stories page and using the filter.

2 out of 6 users took longer for Task 1. They did not understand what condition "fungal overgrowth" is related to.

USABILITY TESTING INSIGHTS

USABILITY RESULTS

We presented our client, Hanai, with color and branding options. The palettes chosen were founded on research and considered the use of color through a socio-cultural lens. We took into consideration the meaning behind each color in different cultures. Developing a bold palette with compliments of softer colors representing, health, loyalty and security. Many Eastern countries link orange to love, happiness and good health. Pink is representative of good health and femininity. In Asia and the Middle East blue represents immortality. In North America and Europe, blue represents trust and serenity.

STYLE GUIDE

Based on the observation of the usability test, feedback from users and the client we made changes that are reflected in our final prototype.

HIGH-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE

CLIENT FEEDBACK

Based on client feedback we added the tagline to the opening screen of the app. Included Privacy and disclaimer information on the sign-up screens. Changed the "Help" icon to "index". Added a chat feature for users to be able to ask questions to a medical professional. Added a "Listen to Audio" button option for videos, so that users can still experience the story if they do not have access to a good internet connection.

USABILITY TESTING RESULTS

Based on the results from our usability testing we added a header to the homepage so users understand what content is available on that page. We added more context to each topic card so that users who may not be aware of what a specific health condition is they will be able to navigate to the information they need. Changed "More Information" toggle to "Learn More" to create an action for the user to take.

NEXT STEPS

Learnings + Findings:
‍• Learned of the spectrum of women’s needs based on actual research.
• Cultural nuances and accessibility.
• A mesh of technical and personal constraints means we had to constantly rethink our solutions from many different perspectives

‍Next Steps:
• Working with Hanai to expand the secondary persona.
• Building more accessibility features based on research.
• Chatbot feature to be able to assist people in real-time
• Collaborating with engineer on design.

I WOULD BE THRILLED TO MEET YOU.

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