Case Study
01Overview
Aer is a smart health-management app designed to give new inexperienced parents peace of mind in understanding the early years of infancy by empowering them to gain the knowledge they need to make the right decisions for their children at the right time by reinforcing the meaningful insights they receive through smart appointment guides.
02Background
The design brief was centered around helping new inexperienced parents understand the data collected about their children so they could have peace of mind during the early years of infancy. Early research showed that being connected and having access to medical records was not enough to help new parents make sense of the vast influx of often conflicting information they had recently been overloaded with. What was truly important was providing parents with meaningful and actionable information that would help them provide the best possible care for their children.
03Approach
The design process followed the Double Diamond, made up of four phases, as a model for an iterative and user-centered workflow. In-depth Interviews, Think Aloud Protocols and User Journey Maps were conducted to understand the user's experiences and attitudes about medical records. All of the data were later analyzed using an affinity diagram to visually cluster emergent themes and draw findings, key insights, and pain points. HMW questions were created from the Key Insights to help generate opportunity statements that would inform concept generation. Each concept was then evaluated for innovation and feasibility using the Now Wow How Matrix. In the final phase wireframes were created to illustrate core user journeys of the product through iterative sketching of ideas. Paper prototyping was the first level of user testing and from there, a high-fidelity prototype was developed using Adobe XD. User tests were evaluated using a combination of Think Aloud and User Task Analysis methods. The findings from the evaluations were analyzed using Thematic Analysis to extract themes that needed to be addressed and MoSCoW to prioritize them until a point of saturation was reached and the design could be finalized and delivered.
04Goals and Challenges
The first goal of the project was empowering parents with knowledge that would help them make the right decisions for their children at the right time. To accomplish this goal three main challenges needed to be overcome. The first challenge was engaging parents at the right time by ensuring that they would be motivated to interact without feeling overwhelmed. The second challenge was to discontinue presenting generic information and rather provide it in a way that was meaningful and easy for parents to understand within the context of their children. The third challenge was to facilitate memory retention so that parents would be able to learn and recall information later on. The second goal of the project was to help parents and their children’s health practitioners communicate effectively to help everyone get the most out of each well-child visit. This goal brought on a fourth challenge; to help parents raise any concerns they might have so they felt cared for and listened to while helping the overall experience feel open and inclusive for all parents.
05Outcome
Aer's innovative user interaction is the result of a design-thinking approach to problem-solving for user needs, substantiated with a framework of theories and principles to overcome the challenges that arose. Aer utilizes elements from BJ Fogg's Behavior Model to engage parents at times when they have higher levels of motivation by building new behaviors on top of existing ones. Aer is able to remind parents to review appointment guides a few days before an appointment, while in the waiting room, or as indicated in their preference settings. Aer uses the theory of Desired Paths to give parents a convenient outlet for raising any concerns they might have and sharing them with their partner and children's healthcare practitioners. At appointments, healthcare practitioners address the answers for the concerns to the parent who originated them, making it a more inclusive experience for all parents. The Aer ecosystem is made possible by partnering with the NHS, allowing Aer to tap into their databases to access the medical records of parents and children. The ecosystem is supported by a health database created together with the NHS, doctors, scientists, engineers, and designers, that acts as a framework detailing the nuances of infant growth and development from birth. Aer uses the DIKW Hierarchy as a model to transform data into knowledge by using AI and deep learning technologies to customize the framework with unique insights specific to each child. This enables Aer to deliver smart, informed and bespoke insights to parents about their children through smart appointment guides. Lastly, Aer uses Spaced Repetition Learning principles to helps parents learn, remember, and recall information later on. Aer helps parents gain knowledge they can act on by preparing them ahead of time for upcoming appointments and reviewing them on the information over time while building on the topics they have previously learned.
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