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THE CHALLENGE

Ava Women, a fertility tracker, has a basic calendaring and activity logging interface and wanted an interface that is more updated, tracks more variables, and is in line with other fertility trackers on the market.

 

APPROACH & KEY INSIGHTS

The client gave us a few design specs and we went ahead and carried out extensive competitive analyses, informal user interviews and iterated over usability studies which revealed that people liked tracking interfaces that:

 

  • Provided an uncluttered calendar interface that showed at a glance when is her expected period and ovulation time frame

  • Have new interaction design

  • Many logging variables

  • Easily navigable

THE SOLUTION

We designed the user flows, interaction design, and low and medium fidelity wireframes for the calendar interface and the logging interface. We also sketched an alternative calendar interface that allows users to see trends over time.

CONTEXT & CHALLENGES

Ava is the first fertility tracker with a wearable device. 

 

Ava needed assistance designing a calendar that is easy to understand, aesthetically pleasing, and interactive. They also needed a logging system with interaction design recommendations.

 

Our client’s business objectives were to:

  • Become the elegant, helpful, older-sister that users would turn to for ovulation advice

  • Promote brand recognition

 

Design constraints specified by our client include:

  • Ensure the look and feel is in line with a highly-educated elegant app design

  • We were dissuaded from performing primary research

DISCOVER

We performed a competitive analysis on other ovulation trackers and evaluated their calendaring systems for ease of use, aesthetics and content efficiency. We also analyzed what logging items each tracker recorded and evaluated how the most popular logging items were recorded. 

 

While the client clearly stated that they didn’t believe research/interviews were useful, we disagreed and decided to, at a minimum, perform informal interviews to determine what women wanted and expected to see in a fertility tracker. 

 

Questions we were interested in include: 

  • What information is perceived to be the most valuable to the person using a fertility tracker? 

  • What calendaring format is the most clear to them?

  • What information do they require to view on the calendar layout?

  • Which logging items are the most important to the user?

  • What are the most popular ways of inputting the logging data for the important logging items?

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

We reviewed 8 fertility trackers to evaluate their user flows, calendaring layout and interaction, and their logging screens. and variables. 

INFORMAL INTERVIEWS

While we were dissuaded from performing interviews, we felt it useful to gauge how women might use fertility trackers (and other trackers) and what primary features they expect to see on a fertility tracker app.

 

SYNTHESIS

Our findings included:

 

Calendar

  • Women cared most about when they are expected to be at peak fertility

  • Women cared secondarily about predicting their period

 

Logging 

We found these to be the most common and desired metrics to include in the app:

  • Basal Temperature

  • Intercourse (did they have sex that day?)

  • Medications (what did they take?)

  • Ovulation Test (did they take a test and if so, what's the result?)

  • Period (did they have their period that day?)

  • Pregnancy Tests (did they take a test and if so, what's the result?)

  • Symptoms (physical or emotional)

  • Notes (a section the user can write anything that doesn't fall into the other categories)

 

IDEATION & ITERATION

  Sketches galore > selection > wireframe > usability testing > iterate

 

Based on Ava’s branding guidelines that Ava is to be elegant and sophisticated, we brainstormed and sketched out various layouts. Ava picked from our top sketches which they favored and from there we began our low-fidelity wireframing and usability testing. 

 

Our usability tests focused on aesthetics and clarity of the information being presented in the calendar and logging screen. Could users intuitively understand the calendar? Were users able to easily find items on the calendar and logging screen?

 

Learnings from the multiple rounds of usability tests include:

  • Users wanted to clearly see a graphical representation of their ovulation cycle. They wanted to see exactly when were their peak ovulation days (in addition to their general ovulation days). 

  • Users wanted minimal icons on the calendar. They felt more than 3 icons tested their cognitive load.

  • Universal icons and standards work best. Users don’t want to have to needlessly memorize Ava-specific notations or icons.  

IDEATION & SKETCHING

We each ideated 10 layouts with the key features and sketched how they might be displayed, then brought together each our top ideas to present to the client. From our sketches, the client chose the direction they were interested in pursuing and from there we began our rough wireframing and usability studies. 

USABILITY TESTING & ITERATION

We tested and iterated a number of different designs. We looked for if the user could easily understand the calendar, the icons and graph within the calendars and we wanted to test if the user found the logging layout to be self-explanatory. 

SOLUTION & DELIVERABLES

We made our final design decisions based on the iterative usability testing. Some findings drove our design decisions. 

 

Calendar (see below)

Findings:

  • Three different icons is the maximum the users can comfortably remember

  • The users primarily cared about their projected menstrual days and their projected ovulation days.   

 

Logging Screen (see left)

After trying a number of layouts, we came up with some features:

  • A top left/right scrolling calendar that displayed a week at a time. The day in the middle of the scroll is the day we can edit the data for. 

  • An accordion card-layout that automatically opens the top two logging items (period & sex) and hides the rest (as requested by the client). 

  • The use of icons for an international audience and decided on elegant line icons.

  • To give users feedback on if they have missed any of the eight of the logging items, the logging icon fills with purple and a checkmark appears once data has been entered for the logging item. 

  • Logging items are selected with a single tap and deselected with another tap.

​

Our deliverables included

  • User Flows to show the different ways users can switch between the calendars and the logging screens

  • Mid-fidelity wireframes for 

    • Three fertility calendars for the client to choose from

    • Activity logging screen

  • Sketch for

    • A trends calendar

  • Research Report with the results of our competitive analysis 

  • Usability Testing Report that summarized our findings

LEARNINGS

Design 

  • Users are repelled by interfaces that are radically different from accepted standards. Good UX should be invisible and information-dense

 

Client communication

  • Set expectations on the first day. We are UX researchers and designers and research is a key driver of our designs. 

  • Be thorough in determining what the client wants. Do they already have an image in their mind about what the product should look like? Even if they say they don’t they probably already have biases and preconceived notions that can be sussed out. 

  • Prepare to state how important research is to the design process. Lack of research means a lack of insight into the core audience which leads to a poorer product-market fit.

  • Instituting feedback policies with the client. For example, not providing feedback for 72 hours, even after follow-up emails and then suddenly providing feedback six hours before the final presentation is not acceptable. 

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