Overview
Role
Product Designer (research, ideation, redesign)
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Team
Isabella Borges (Product Designer), Henrique Florencio (UI), Mariana Buzatto (UX/UI and UX Writer) Nelson Sales (Front-End), Salustiano Muniz (Back-End), Tamires Cristina (Back-End)
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Timeline
2-days hackathon
60 days refinement
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Tools
Figma, Miro, Notion, Maze
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Award
This project was one of the seven Brazilian projects chosen for the nationals in NASA Space Challenge Hackathon
Scenario
The Challenge
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COVID-19 continues to be a global problem even though vaccination efforts are underway to control its propagation. The challenge was to use environmental data and other information to build a smartphone application that provides individualized, geolocated, COVID-19 risk warnings.
According to Our World in Data, Brazil is one of the most impacted countries with more than 607.000 deaths. Many countries are expected to control this health crisis in a few months. However, the Brazilian population realized they needed to learn how to live with the "new normal".
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Our Process
Discover
Research
Analysis
Ideation
Prototype
Test
Refine
How might we bring social awareness, response, and health security regarding risks of COVID to the Brazilian population before they even get out of home?
Discover
Benchmarking
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After a Desk Research, we identified COVID-19 tracking apps in different countries. The most relevant for our research were:
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Conecte SUS (Brazil)
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Coronavírus - SUS (Brazil)
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TousAntiCovid (France)
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Covid Tracker (Ireland)
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We analised the features and realized the following differences:
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User Research
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Before launching an MVP we wanted to gather information about the target group to build our personas and understand the user's behaviors and demographic data.
We also wanted to validate if the population needed this kind of app and if it was relevant to developing this digital product. That's why our first strategy was to launch a survey.
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Survey result analysis
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Quantitative research on Google Forms
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Target-group: Brazilian population (2020): 212.600.000
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196 people answered the survey
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87% use the Internet and 50% use Social Media to inform themselves about the virus, which validates our hyphothesis: A COVID-19 Tracking App is relevant to bring information and awareness to the Brazilian population.
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Gathering Information
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The CSD Matrix gathers certainties, doubts, and assumptions analyzed in the Desk Research.
This process was used before starting the User Research, to understand what do we need to explore and which assumptions to validate.
This exercise was made in Miro with our collaborative team.
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7. Do you inform yourself about COVID-19 contamination rates?
24% - No
76% - Yes
8. If you answered yes to the previous question, select the sources of information. (select as many answers as needed)
The second survey result analysis
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Quantitative and qualitative questions on Google Forms
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Target-group: People around the world using covid tracking apps
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205 people answered the survey
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Goal: To understand which features were relevant for the users
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We discovered that these features were the most relevant:
- News about the virus and vaccines
- Risks of getting covid in restaurants, bars, shoppings, parks, etc
- If they had contact with infected people
- Share positive covid test
- Drugstores and places where population can make covid tests
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Interviews
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After analyzing the results from two surveys, desk research
and competitor analysis, it was time for some prioritization.
To understand what questions should be made, we looked
into assumptions and doubts from the CSD Matrix and made
a knowledge vs. impact analysis. Therefore, we selected
information that we had low knowledge and high impact to
question four users.
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The questions were about habits, fears, motivations,
and obstacles:
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How do you feel about a pandemic? How was your experience in these two years?
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Did your life change after the pandemic? How? How did your daily life change?
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Do you have any fears when you leave home? Which ones?
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What do you think that companies, for example, restaurants can do to decrease this fear?
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Do you take any precautions when you leave home? What do you do?
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Do you prefer to work at the home office or presential? why?
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How would you define your relationship with technology? why?
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Do you think your relationship with technology changed in the pandemic? Why?
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Have you ever used a covid tracking app? Why? Did you recommend it to anyone?
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What would be essential in a covid tracking app? why?
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Have you ever tested positive to covid? How did you feel? Did you tell anyone?
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How do you follow covid progress? Where?
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How do you expect to receive trustworthy information about covid?
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What bothers you the most in the pandemic? Why?
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What do you think about fake news? why?
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How do you think we can fight against fake news? why?
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How do you know if it's trustworthy information or fake news?
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Assumptions
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Fernanda, 30
Santos, Brazil
"Nowadays I'm not very scared to go out like before. I avoid drinking from the same glass. If I get a cold I go and take a test, I'm not that afraid anymore because of the vaccines. I think it's difficult that something might happen to me, you know?
For me, it's more important to check vaccination rates, UTI occupancy, more than several cases of COVID-19."
Paloma, 25
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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"I've never used a COVID-19 tracking app in Brazil, I think it's because they didn't advertise it.
I think that restaurants are trying to limit the number of people, but I often realize it's very full. Maybe if they have a social distance, an open place, windows were without air conditioning, it would be better to decrease the fear to go to this kind of places"
Alissa, 23
Bremen, Germany
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" I think the best thing about a COVID-19 tracking app is to decrease the risk of contaminations and spreading the virus. You can also check if you had contact with a positive person. However, this is not only about using the app but having the opportunity to make a covid test anywhere. Here, living in Brazil is very bureaucratic and it takes a while to make a test via SUS or Health insurance."
Statements by nationality
Define
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Personas
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After understanding patterns in our research, we built up two different personas. The personas' creation is important to bring more empathy to our case. All of the information is based on real data collected in the two surveys and interviews.
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Customer Journey
The same data helped us to build the Customer Journey. This map helps us to understand the user's needs. The most important goal to map was to go out of home and go to a secure place, that respects the covid protocols, and also enjoy the day feeling secure and aware. The User journey mapping helped us to design a better product because new ideas emerged to improve users' experiences.
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How might we?
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After analyzing the results of two surveys and four
interviews, we elaborated some questions to start
our ideation. We used "How might we...?" to bring
ideas and suggestions from the team. After that,
we brainstormed some solutions on the table below:
Develop
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The solution
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The decisions that we made based on the results were that we would build an application that can track risks of COVID-19 in open places, neighborhoods, restaurants, shoppings, cities, etc. The group target is defined by people that have smartphones and know how to use apps.
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The app that uses open-source environmental data and other open-source information (such as location using satellites and geolocation by Google, joined with the Ministério da Saúde -Brazilian ministry of health- information about infection by city).
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Wireframe and Crazy 8's
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At the beginning of the hackathon's design process the team and
I created wireframes for testing purposes. This was very useful
to understand how the application could look like. After the
hackathon we decided to refine the MVP, with more research
and ideation, that's why we also used Crazy 8's as a tool to help
us with the redesign.
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The MVP
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Usability Test
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The usability test aimed to identify possible usability problems. We wanted to
find out if the users understood the MVP's concept, goal, and main features, such as
searching for a risky location and adding a positive covid test. We used Remote testing with
the target group. From the tests we got the insights below:
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Most of the people understood the concept
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The description was too long and on too many screens
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63% didn't find it easy to search for a risky location
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17,2% didn't accomplish the first step of the research
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19,6% didn't accomplish the second step of adding a positive COVID-19 test.
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Deliver
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Refinement
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After our usability test, some insights impacted the way we decided to design our next version of the MVP. This first version was only made in two days of competition and there was not enough time for research, ideation, and prioritization. Therefore, we started the refinement process in the next two months.
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After research, we scan some results and used the Value x Effort Matrix to decide which features were low effort and high value to the users.
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Redesign
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Click on the link to watch the prototype below
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Learnings
In this project, I learned how to work with people from a different professional backgrounds and use the Double Diamond Process. A lot of activities were based on the Design Circuit Course and some mentors helped us along the way. I would like to thank very much my team and Katia Lopes, as well mentors from the ADP list, Vanessa Espinosa and Paarmita Bhargava for all of the amazing insights about starting a UX career. And specially my teacher Apparicio Júnior.
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I learned a lot about listening to the users and remembering "I'm not the user", and I caught myself being surprised in a lot of interviews. This was very important for me. I and my team will continue improving and developing HUB-COVID App and the next steps are coming soon.
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