My Role:
Lead UX Researcher
Created the Research Proposal, Co-conducted User Interviews + SME Interviews
Led Research Synthesis
Distilled Insights to Design Decisions
Co-facilitated usability testing and prioritized insights to influence Final Iteration
Stakeholders
Client: Hanai Health
UX Research Team:
Karishma S, Gema N, Juliette M
UX/UI Design Team:
Alex B, Solange C, Marina V
The Methods
Research Methods
Secondary Research for cultural sensitivity
Devising a product across 4 countries
Wireframing
Rapid Prototyping
Usability Testing
Final Iterations in English, Swahili + Arabic
The Problem
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.
Did we solve
the Problem?
Yes! We created an app that accounted for all the constraints and provided a platform for women of varying literacy levels to access healthcare information easily.
The Impact
The client will be launching the She/Her app in Q2 of 2023 and it will be available for download in Malaysia, Tanzania, USA and Germany.
The Client
Hanai Health is a non-profit technology provider giving women from underserved communities more access to healthcare.
They wanted to launch a new app - She/Her - that provides accurate information about women’s healthcare encompassing both pain and pleasure.
They wanted this app to launch in 4 countries, address at least 3 language flows, and be accessible to women with low literacy levels and a poor internet connection.
Constraints to Consider
Creating a MVP (Minimum Viable Product) for populations across 4 continents means understanding the problem space from multiple perspectives and working within expected constraints.
In addition to the ones listed below is the constraint of Time. We only had 4 weeks for execution. We had to make it work!
Design Thinking
Integrating the Double Diamond process to include ‘reflect,’ this is how we approached the problem
Research Methods
We conducted User Interviews to identify needs, gaps, and goals.
I played a key role in the user research phase, by defining the scope and conducting multiple user interviews. Additionally, I led the affinity mapping exercise and was primarily responsible for synthesizing the insights gathered from the research.
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.
I conducted one SME Interview and did research on behavioral design for women’s health + marginalized communities.
Secondary Research: Included articles from various sources that can be found here.
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From Scholarly Articles:
31% of women in Tanzania are completely illiterate. In effect, rate of women’s health illiteracy is even higher.From Behavioral Design for Women: Women's health issues like menstrual health, contraception and STDS may be stigmatized in these communities (Tanzania and Malaysia), preventing women from seeking care or discussing these issues with healthcare providers. In effect, there is little room for understanding women’s pleasure.
From Research on Marginalized Communities: In Tanzania, women's health-seeking behaviors include seeking traditional healers or avoiding modern healthcare facilities because the latter seems to be impersonal, intimidating and expensive.
From Design Thinking in other Cultures:
Importance of accessibility in underserved communities - by using simple and intuitive user interfaces, providing information in multiple formats (e.g., text, audio, video).
Role of Color Theory and how it plays out across different cultures.
From Comparative Analysis:
The design solution must consider technological limitations in that all content needs to be hosted on the app
Looking at apps. designed in Arabic because it’s a completely different orientation
Understanding how apps cater to illiterate audiences around the world
Primary Research
With the inability to connect or test illiterate users who have little-to-no technological exposure, we decided to conduct interviews with English speakers. This became the focus of our lean research.
With time constraint, we shared our interview goals and screening process with the client - who helped us source our participants.
Interview Goal:
To understand how diverse people look for information on a health app
To see how they respond to sensitive educational content about sexual pleasure
Screening Process:
We were looking for participants who:
meet our language requirements (fluent in English)
have access to a stable internet connection
come from diverse backgrounds, including age, ethnicity, geographic location and tech usage
Participants and Protocol:
Via Zoom calls, we spoke with these 5 women (30 minutes each) in a structured interview format.
Protocols included building rapport, being mindful of people’s belief systems and sensitivities around sharing information, and giving them the option to answer only if comfortable.
Questions were structured to account for:
getting to know the user
gathering user behavior
gathering opinions as they relate to the project goal
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We asked 15 open-ended questions some of which include:
Walk me through how you look for medical help as it relates to women's health?
Can you tell me about a time where someone shared an intimate story related to their health or sex life with you?
If you knew that there were others who experienced things similar to you, what would you like to learn from their stories?
What are your thoughts on sharing personal stories on a woman’s health app (where your information would still be private)?
Affinity Mapping
I led this exercise. We took all the quotes from the interviews, put them on post-its, rearranged them a couple times, and as a team we came to a consensus on emerging categories.
Here are some direct quotes that reflect on the most prominent themes.
Key Insights
From these quotes and themes, I distilled these ‘I statements’ to work towards a solution
Personas
With the data from User Interviews and Secondary Research, we wanted to inform all language flows to incorporate some aspects of Nur and some aspects of Zahra.
Hi Nur!
She is our primary persona who was kept in mind while including topics of discussion, simplicity of use, and the need to validate her own health challenges.
Hello Zahra!
She is our secondary persona who is critical to remind us about the need for accessibility. In addition, women in Tanzania marry at an early age, have very high maternal mortality rates, and are more prone to STDs, so there is a need to empower and educate this population.
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Nur + Zahra
They both represent very different worlds but cover the variance well. This variance was important to showcase the different audiences that would use the app around the world
Age + Range of Topics: Nur is 47 and perimenopausal whereas Zahra is 15 and in a pre-sexual phase of her life
Locations + Access: Nur comes from a big city in Malaysia, has access to education and is technologically savvy, but her socio-cultural situation could be a hindrance to accessing healthcare.. Whereas Zahra is an illiterate young girls in rural Tanzania, where accessibility is a big challenge.
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Nur, as an archetype, represents people who are curious about their health and sexual behaviors but are too shy to ask about it openly.
Zahra, as an archetype, represents innocent individuals who have a strong desire to learn about the world but their lack of education can make them naïve and vulnerable to the negative influences of others.
Solution
To create an app that serves as an accessible platform where women from various ethnic communities with varying literacy levels can learn and share their experiences around their sexual and reproductive health, thereby enabling them to feel validated and empowered.
Insights to
Design Decisions
Ideation Workshop
We came up with many sketches to make the building blocks of this app
Prototype with
Design Decisions
Usability Testing
Research Goal:
To see if users reach the homepage within 30 seconds
To understand browsing behavior across a set of diverse women
Participants:
6 women (2 Malaysian, 1 Indian, 1 German, 1 Russian, 1 American)
Moderated remotely via Zoom calls
Protocols:
Concurrent Think Aloud
Retrospective Probing
Iterations from Testing + Client Feedback
Style
Guide
Based on Design Thinking in our secondary research, we wanted to explore colors in different cultures.
We did A/B Testing with our Usability Test Audience and the Blue, Orange, Pink set was preferable.
Final Iteration
Flow in Swahili
Flow in Arabic
Learnings &
Next Steps
Measuring KPIs:
Since She/Her will be launched in 2023, I would love to measure KPIs like: User engagement, retention rate, conversion rate, task success rate and user feedback via Voice of Customer Data (what are people saying about it online, # of downloads, long term stats by country).Knowing when surveys are useful:
Experts in Tanzania are often overworked, pressed for time and may not have great fluency to answer many questions so building surveys for this population was not the best use of our time, and a great learning for me.Building on product equity by focussing on one flow:
Sociocultural differences change how women browse or consume information. I would love to dive deeper into one language flow at a time and test browsing patterns by region.Testing on illiterate audiences in underserved communities:
To truly understand our audience, I would love to do a contextual inquiry with rural Tanzanian women to make a better product.
