gut check:
end-to-end mobile app

This is

A health and wellness app designed to help users with gastrointestinal issues manage and improve their symptoms

Check out the prototype

Project length:

5 weeks

Roles:

Service designer, UX/UI, Researcher, Creative Lead, Prototyper

Project type:

End-to-end MVP

Background

Nearly half of Americans struggle with GI issues

I'm sure we've all heard people say things along the lines of:

"Trust your gut!" "What's your gut telling you?" "What's your gut instinct?" "You've got guts!"

The gut is thought to be the home of reason, courage, and intuition.

Many people [myself included] struggle with gut-related health issues, routinely suffering from mild to moderate symptoms (ie. indigestion, abdominal pain, bloating, etc.) with no clear cause.

There needs to be an easier way for people to take charge, educate themselves about gut health, and build healthier habits that will leave their stomachs and minds at ease.

Problem space

research

Users want to take the guess work out of symptom management

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

Determine the role of gut-health-related issues in people’s lives
Determine the role of gut-health-related services in people’s lives
Understand what makes a gut-health-related service ‘worth it’
Understand how much money users would be willing to pay for a gut-health-related application

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

Cara Care app

Ayble Health app

Nerva app

In order to understand what at home solutions were currently being offered to users with GI issues, I took a look at three leading gut health apps.

COLLECTIVE APP STRENGTHS

Wide range of features
Collaborations with verified medical professionals
Alignment with academic research institutions
Wealth of positive user reviews, ratings, and downloads

COLLECTIVE APP WEAKNESSES

Expensive subscription models
Lack of free or 'basic' features
Emphasis on serving users with formal diagnoses
Poor customer service
Medical and sterile feeling UI

USER INTERVIEWS

empty doctors office filled with plants and papers, with blue and cream colors.jpg

Participant recruitment

First and foremost, I wanted to speak with users who have first-hand experiences with gut-health-related issues.

I was able to gather 5 participants, all from varying health backgrounds.

USER PERSONAS

User interviews revealed that most individuals with GI issues can be categorized into roughly 2 groups based on aspects such as symptom frequency, severity, and existence of a formal medical diagnosis.

Moderate to severe

symptoms

Mild symptoms

PROJECT SCOPE

"Individuals who suffer from gut health-related issues need help managing and making sense of their symptoms because medical professionals often fail to accurately identify GI issues and popular means of symptom management (ie. medicine, diet changes) fail to provide sufferers with consistent relief."

Problem statement

How might we help individuals with gut health issues better manage their symptoms?

How might we help individuals with gut health issues make sense of their symptoms? (ie. root cause, potential diagnosis, triggers)

How might we help individuals with gut health issues improve their gut microbiome and develop healthy, long-term lifestyle habits?

HMWs

ia and user flows

Building user confidence in app navigation

Sitemap

View in full

Consolidate MVP features
Organize content into easily understandable categories
Determine hierarchy through logic + anticipated order of user actions

brand starting point

Health products deserve more personality

LOGO VARIATIONS

COLOR PALETTE SAMPLE

TYPOGRAPHY

GRAPHICS

Compassion

Transparency

Authenticity

Wellness

Growth

BRAND VALUES

introducing gut check

A gut health app with tracking

BRIEF USER ONBOARDING

Introductory quiz for new users to complete upon signup, including basic information about:

Relevant medical history (ie. medical interventions and formal diagnoses)

Symptom details (ie. symptom types, frequency, and severity)

Known food sensitivities and allergies

Personal gut health goals

MUILTI-PURPOSE TRACKING

Flexible food, symptom, and mood tracking

Expansive library of food and drinks, with option to log 'recents' and 'saved meals'

Informational food cards with common allergens and serving sizes

Motivational 'tracking score' with reccomendations for user activity

Personalized 'Gut report': regularly updated overview of key insights
- (Ex. Top symptoms, potential food sensitivties, best and worst foods, and lifestyle reccomendations)

Educational learning hub
- (Ex. Expert articles, how-to video guides, and gut-healthy recipes)

Time-based challenges
- (Ex. Weekly challenges to encourage engagement in healthy habits)

OTHER FEATURES

wireframing + testing

Making a hard thing (tracking) easy to do

Low-fidelity main screens

Although most users expressed interest in food tracking, many admitted they would need the process to be unmistakably easy for them to do so. My focus during this phase was to make key information easily accessible and present it in a visually appealing way.

View in full

TESTING ROUND 1

6 participants

HOME PAGE

FOOD TRACKING PAGE

What do users want to see first? Gut information might be more important than optional challenges

Consider an open search with key words and phrases vs. food categories to increase flexibility and reduce time spent searching

RESULTS

Consider hierarchy of home screen (ie. what do users want to see first?)
Opportunity for confirmation modal after tracking
Change to a freeform search vs. food categories
Add verbal clarity to onboarding and try more traditional design patterns
Add option to save or send gut report to healthcare provider
Add tags to recipes for allergens + option to save for later

gutcheck onboarding flow v1 pre testing.png

High-fidelity onboarding flow version #1

Big, round buttons and straightforward questions were chosen to make answer selection as simple as possible.

View in full

TESTING ROUND 2

7+ participants

69.1

Avg. task

direct success rate

4.3

Avg. task difficulty

rank (5 being easy)

Avg. task mis-click

rate

37

TRACKING GRAPH

Before

In place of time-based categorization, allow users to sort results by data type and provide means of measurement on graph

After

NAVIGATION

Before

After

In place of buttons that reveal their labels when selected, maintain label visbility for reduced user learning curve; leverage color palette

RESULTS

WORKED: UI, colors, feature treatments and overall 'feel'

CHANGE: Adding direct links from the home page to key resources, adding an 'all of the above' option during onboarding, altering the appearance of the graph, adding allergens to food item cards, and adding an 'N/A' option on the allergies and sensitivities page

QUESTIONS: Why the search input didn't automatically generate results, why the calendar was designed that way, and why the treatment of the recent results blurbs looked interactive

IDEAS: Adjusting the text hierarchy so that the page headers looked more distinguished, altering bottom navigation to reveal labels

final result

impact

This project was a great challenge that helped me grow as a designer more than any of my previous projects. Being able to spearhead an app's creation from start to finish was empowering in a way that I wouldn't have previously anticipated. It was a unique opportunity to take ownership of each design stage and push myself to make each choice thoughtfully, bringing to life an MVP that could make a significant impact on users today.

PROJECT OUTCOMES

Brought to life a product whose market position is unique and untapped

Successfully confirmed ideas and feature set through multiple rounds of testing

Validated consensus that gut health is a real and complex problem

NEXT STEPS

Begin expansion into other workflows

Look into funding from VCs

Explore payment models

gut check: end-to-end mobile app

Check out the prototype

Project length:

Roles:

Project type:

Background

Nearly half of Americans struggle with GI issues

Problem space

research

Users want to take the guess work out of symptom management

Participant recruitment

First and foremost, I wanted to speak with users who have first-hand experiences with gut-health-related issues. I was able to gather 5 participants, all from varying health backgrounds.

ia and user flows

Building user confidence in app navigation

Sitemap

View in full

Consolidate MVP features

Organize content into easily understandable categories

Determine hierarchy through logic + anticipated order of user actions

brand starting point

Health products deserve more personality

introducing gut check

A gut health app with tracking

wireframing + testing

Making a hard thing (tracking) easy to do

Low-fidelity main screens

Although most users expressed interest in food tracking, many admitted they would need the process to be unmistakably easy for them to do so. My focus during this phase was to make key information easily accessible and present it in a visually appealing way. View in full

High-fidelity onboarding flow version #1

Big, round buttons and straightforward questions were chosen to make answer selection as simple as possible. View in full

final result

impact

gut check:
end-to-end mobile app

First and foremost, I wanted to speak with users who have first-hand experiences with gut-health-related issues.

I was able to gather 5 participants, all from varying health backgrounds.

Although most users expressed interest in food tracking, many admitted they would need the process to be unmistakably easy for them to do so. My focus during this phase was to make key information easily accessible and present it in a visually appealing way.

View in full

Big, round buttons and straightforward questions were chosen to make answer selection as simple as possible.

View in full