According to CDC, around 49% of this country's people are taking at least one prescription drug. Medication is a very convenient and necessary item to treat one's condition; however, because of the human nature and types of medication increase throughout the time, people experience hard times on managing medication.
Most common concern is to forget taking the medication, and the other would be losing the information about it, such as number of dose they supposed to take or side effects.
For this end-to-end application project, I decided to make a mobile application that would ease things around managing medication.
Provide a service in which users can easily manage and track their medication information in a mobile application setting.
To better understand the current situation on managing the medication, I first researched about 3 competitors, 3 as direct competitors and 1 as an indirect competitor.
Through the analysis, I realized that almost all direct competitors had overwhelming design with a lot of information in a page, although their goals were to provide fast and easy services.
To understand exact what part the users are concerned when taking medications, I conducted user interviews and talked with potential users who are on some medications.
I got to interview with a nurse practitioner, and she told me that she has seen many patients not following the direction when taking medication or forgetting to take it for a long period and end up with worsen conditions.
I also learned that everyone is trying hard to not forget taking medication by inventing their own ways, but those unique ways intervene the routine at certain points and end up forgetting information, side effects, or even taking medication.
Through the interviews and affinity mapping, I learned that users were coming up with unique, convenient ways to manage multiple medications. Some users were memorizing packages or labels, while others were remembering medications by making a dedicated space in their house.
To narrow down the solution ideas and choose a main problem I want to focus on, I made two personas who have different pain points when taking medications. Both personas reflect the results I got from interviews. For example, Jessica, a mother of a child who has been taking multiple medications, has a problem managing medications and struggles finding a best, simple, less time-consuming ways.
By making personas, the target users I should focus on became as
1. a person who has been taking multiple medication
2. a person who is being busy on their work and life
To minimize the time of adding a medication to the service, I came up with the idea of applying image scanning system to read a name of medication from its package.
By doing this, the users only need to scan a package or a bottle and the system will find rest of the important information.
I came up with three keywords that I want to reflect through the designs:
reliable, smart, and useful.
Logo of MedManager reflects the main feature of the service: managing and tracking medication.
I chose blue as a brand and logo colors to show that the service is reliable, while providing comfort feeling throughout the app.
I at first designed calender-style tracker on the home screen and a simple confirmation page that just shows the medication details obtained by scanning a package.
But after reconsidering things I should have included and other small details that just didn't look right, I realized that users could set the reminder of a medication during the process, and having a calender-style tracker would make the user harder to click dates and difficult for a designer to show completion status of each date.
Version 2 shows all the revised design of adding medication process.
Challenging part while working on high-fidelity wrireframes was to make the UI more visual-appealing and coming up with better interactive UI on a page of setting up the reminder, especially for day selectors and time selector.
However, there are still many areas I can modify and fix that I will continue working on.
Based on the suggestions and pain points the testers provided, I added FAB (Floating Action Button) on a home screen. When clicked, users can select from two ways to add medication. Since location of the main service is much visible than navigation bar, the app became much UI-friendly and professional looking. I also adjusted the button sizes of day selectors and added a little instruction on choosing time.
Although some features wouldn't work yet, feel free to experience my prototype!
Although the project is finished, there are a couple of areas I can still work on: UI, better design on time picker, and conducting another usability test to ensure potential users like the design.
I will also continue designing remaining screens for a search version of adding medication.