D-Diary
the daily journal for every Diabetic
MY ROLE: UX/UI Researcher/Designer
PROJECT SPAN: 4 months
CAREERFOUNDRY
The Problem
Diabetes, from 0.93% in 1958, grew to 7.40% in 2015, and reached 10.5% of the US population in 2021.
According to Jean M. Lawrence, doctor of science, and colleagues at of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases:
In people age 19 years or younger, rates of type 1 and type 2 diabetes increased 45.1% and 95.3%, respectively.
My Grandma got diagnosed with type 2 Diabetes at 62. Because of that, Mom became more concerned about her blood sugar. However, myself at 24, I did not think there’s much to worry about. I was young, right?
Then, in the past year, a friend of mine came down with type 2. She was 29. In the same year, another acquaintance in his 30s who frequents our family-restaurant told me he had to skip the dessert he usually ordered because he just got diagnosed, too.
It hit me that more and more young people are being diagnosed with the disease today. Contributing factors might just be the trend of the 21st century: higher availability and consumption of foods, growing demand for computer/desk jobs, increased stress, increased work hours and less active time.
The expanding age group asks for a newer, more well-rounded approach when addressing diabetes.
Younger patients means that most of them would have to cope with the disease while balancing out their busy personal life: work & family. Treating diabetes is about incorporating a new lifestyle.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Diabetics need a way to manage their health factors in a fast, accurate, and convenient way because they want to actively improve their health conditions while maintaining their busy work/life schedule.
We will know this to be true when we see an increase in people’s registration with the app, and the retention rate over time.
D-Diary keeps track of the 3 most important aspects in a diabetic’s life, that are:
Blood sugar level
Diet
Exercise
Besides being a highly accurate and accessible database for storing and tracking health records over time, D-Diary also takes on the active role of providing users with a system of recommendations, daily reminders, let users save their favorite exercise routines and diets, and efficiently communicate with other users through the app’s network.
HYPOTHESIS
A comprehensive platform
that helps diabetics build up
the kind of lifestyle they desire.
USER STORIES
Here are some user stories that shed light into what should be designed:
Login/Signup
- As a new user, I want my sign-up process to be fast so I can spend my time more on the app itself.
- As a returning user, I want the app to save my user account information so that I can log back in easily.
Browsing & saving recipes
- As a diabetic patient, I want to look up healthy recipes so I can know what I should or should not eat as part of my diet.
- As a housewife and a pre-diabetic patient, I want to look up new interesting recipes that I can make for my family so that I can add variety to my family's meals while keeping myself healthy.
- As someone who is allergic to peanut, I want to filter out recipes that conclude peanut so I can narrow down my options quickly.
- As someone who cooks a lot, I want to save new recipes to my personal library so I can access them more easily.
Uploading personal data
- As a diabetes patient, I want to upload all of my important data including my daily blood glucose, my diet, exercises, my doctor checkups and medications, to the app so that I can keep track of my medical conditions, and build up positive health routines.
- As a diabetes patient, I want to upload a list of medicines I am taking so I can better manage my medications and be alerted when it is time to take a medicine.
- As a diabetic and a full-time worker, I want to save my coming doctor appointments so I can follow them up more easily and also to arrange my work schedules in accordance.
Onboarding
- As a first timer, I want to have an informative onboarding process so that I can have a general view of what the app is and how it works.
Browsing & saving workout sessions
- As a person with knees problem, I want to search for exercises that have low impact on my knees so that I have no trouble keeping with the routine.
- As a returning user, I want to be able to save the new routine to my personal library so I can access it more easily when I exercise every day.
Accessing the health forum
- As a diabetes patient, I want to look at what other people's stories so I can be encouraged and inspired to fight off this disease.
- As a diabetes patient, I want to ask questions about the disease so that I might receive helpful answers from those who are going through the same thing.
Admin area
- As a user, I want to be able to go back to view or edit my past records so that I can have an accurate report of my journey.
Contacting health expert
- As a diabetes patient, I want to have the ability to discuss my condition with health experts so I receive instantaneous, accurate, and trustworthy consultations about my conditions.
USER INTERVIEWS
I conducted my initial user interviews with 3 people, 2 of which got Type 2 while the last is a college graduate and a gymmer whose parent got Type 2.
Then, I analyzed the results and used affinity mapping to identify common themes..
I dived into each theme and explored their potential impacts, which helped me come down with a few important insights for D-Diary development.
Current Experience with Health Apps
Users use a combination of different apps to track different things. They often opt for the ones that are popular in the market (mySugr for blood sugar tracking, HEVY for weightlifting). The database of these apps are huge and they do their jobs well, most of the time. That being said, users do not place much emphasis on small bugs or a somewhat plain looking interface.
Desired Key Features
The ideal app is able to take in both digital and analog inputs, that is machine generated or through user putting in numbers. The types of information it manages include physical health (exercise, diet, blood glucose levels) and mental health (stress, sleep). It should be a comprehensive source of information, allowing users to look up ideas, questions, concern, and help within the app or through a quick contact button that connects them to a professional.
Food
Some diabetics link going on a diet with committing to a lame, bland diet regime. We can prove this wrong by letting users explore interesting recipes that still satisfy their diet requirements.
Exercise
Exercising plays a big role in a diabetic’s routine. Because users have different types of employments and needs, they might engage in a variety of exercises. Glucose Diary should be able to recommend the suitable work-out routines catered to these users.
Information & Resources
Users seek help and support from their doctor, online communities, or professional health websites. It would be convenient if Glucose Diary can give quick access to their resources within the app environment, through links, or its own internal discussion forum. A discussion forum is another form of online support group where users having the same problem can share their experience and gain insights about the disease.
Motivation & Goals
Users feel mentally positive as they are able to maintain their health routines. Even some diabetics admitted having been taking better care of themselves since diagnosed. Under all circumstances, self care boosts self esteem and improves self image. Users feel healthier, happier, and more confident. We have to make the fight against diabetes a longterm fight. It is not about losing the disease, but goes beyond that to build a healthy, positive lifestyle.
USER PERSONAS
Based on the personas I created, I drew up 2 main user journeys. While user journeys are often left out by designers, I believe it is an important step where we actually see eye to eye with our users. Here we come up with narratives to depict real experiences, thus allow for integrity and empathy to enter our work.
USER JOURNEY
USER JOURNEY #1: Eden uses the app to find a recipe for dinner
USER JOURNEY #2: Zach uses the app to find and perform an exercise
USER FLOW
From the user journeys, it was easy to plan out user flows.
I also added a third user flow, for creating a new blood sugar entry.
USER FLOW #1: Look up and follow a new recipe
USER FLOW #2: Look up and follow a new exercise
USER FLOW #3: Create a new blood sugar entry
SITE MAP
I came up with a sitemap and refined it after conducting a Card sorting session on www.optimalworkshop.com to see where participants would label and group related sets of contents. This quick validation step helped me build the kind of information architecture that follow users’ mental models, so they should easily locate things where they expect them to be.
D-Diary refined sitemap
SKETCHES
So I picked up my pen and sketched out rough designs on 3x5in guest checks. Small scaled hand-sketches, in my opinion, bears the following perks:
Accessible
Fast
Uncostly
Easy to make corrections to
Suitable for lean UX that is subject to constant reiterations
Home screen and blood sugar log
Recipe feature
Forum feature
PROTOTYPES
Mid-fidelity Prototypes
I turned my sketches into wireframes and then digital, with a few modifications.
The cards on Home screen were changed
to display information more graphically
instead of text-based.
Demo pictures got realistically bigger.
Top tab bar got rounded corners to
fit the general theme.
Forum contents got more sophisticated.
“Create a new post” page was updated to
only include relevant information.
High-fidelity Prototypes
From these mid-fidelity prototypes, I built up high-fidelity ones within a month. After that, I started to plan and write my usability test script. This was indeed an exciting phase of the project!
USABILITY TESTING
Goals
Understand how participants perceive the value of the app and use it to satisfy their own needs
Observe how these participants approach the tasks, navigate, and search for information
Measure participants’ general satisfaction with the experience
Methodology
Moderated in-person
Moderated remote
Participants
I tested with 6 participants. Here is a list of participants and basic demographic information.
Usability Test Participants
Results & Analysis
Rainbow Spreadsheet is a technique created by UX Researcher and Designer Tomer Sharon, used to organize and analyze usability tests results. This is the Rainbow Spreadsheet that I composed after D-Diary usability test sessions, along with important feedback points, their frequency, and possible solutions. For each of the errors, I rated its severity using Jakob Nielsen’s four-step rating scale.
REITERATIONS
I got a list of problems to fix, some more problematic than the others. The ones that had to do with navigation were definitely the fires I had to put out, which I did, but it might be too early to call this an end. If time and budget allows, I would like to test D-Diary with a bigger pool of users, especially diabetics with high need of usage. For now though, D-Diary presents practical and impactful solutions, alongside expert help when needed to keep this disease in check.
D-Diary at a glance
An all-in-one journal
for diabetics
No longer do users have to open a bunch of different apps for different purposes (one to log daily activities, one to look up recipes, one to track blood sugar).
D-Diary does all these things while maintaining its simplicity - ease of use and navigation.
Your progress broken
down in numbers
All user’s input, ranging from blood sugar levels, exercise routines, carb intake, calories consumption, gets digitalized, calculated, and visualized in a neat, accessible, and appealing fashion.
This way, D-Diary can easily tell users of their progress:
what has been done and what not in order to fulfill their health goals.
Meal planning
has never been
so easy
No need to fret about what to make for dinner tonight! Users can now easily search for recipes of their desire using the in-app’s recipe collection and filtering system.
Each recipe comes with a detailed breakdown of nutrition facts.
Connect you with the community
Dive in the community of people
who share your journey.
Share, learn, grow, repeat.
