Plus One

A Comprehensive Wellness Aid for New Parents

About Plus One

PLUS ONE is a proposed app for the NorthShore Medical Group's patient care portal, NorthShore Connect. It has been designed to be fully integrated into the existing mobile platform used by the NorthShore University Health System.

Why Make Plus One?

I was inundated with information leading up to, and directly after the birth of my first child. Frankly, I'm still swimming in child rearing advice but I'm a little better at separating the wheat from the chaff. After connecting with other new parents, I kept hearing complaints like "I wish it were easier to get in touch with my doctors", or "I just don't know what advice to follow". PLUS ONE addresses these concerns, and gives users a powerful and intuitive tool to record, share, and attain information from their primary care givers.

High End Goals And Objectives

1

Consolidate and substantiate medical advice given to patients.

2

Simplify communication between patients and NSHS care providers.

3

Help patients know what's expected from them and what's available to them.

4

Help patients orienteer the network of NSHS hospitals and office

buildings.

Who Is This Feature For?

I only had a month to research, design, and iterate PLUS ONE, so I limited my user interview pool to eight people. I focused on new and expectant mothers. Circumstantially, I'm part of a community of new parents, so finding people to talk to was fairly easy and I learned a lot. The average age of the interviewee was 35 years old and most of the new moms (7 out of 8) had a career that they planned on returning to. Everyone I talked to felt overwhelmed by the amount of data that they were expected to keep track of, both before and after giving birth. Staying on top of doctors appointments was another shared concern, and everyone wanted a better way to communicate with their care providers and with other new parents.

I combined the most relevant attributes of the people I interviewed to create the user persona shown here.

Research and Planning

The Competition

There are lots of apps to track your baby's habits and behaviors, but sharing that data with your care provider can get really tricky. Here, I've looked at three of the most popular baby tracking apps currently in the google play store and analyzed what works and what doesn't.

Key Takeaways From Competitive Analysis

None of the apps that I looked addressed the health and wellbeing of the parent(s).

None of the apps offered guidance for the time leading up to the baby's arrival.

Design Challenges

Identify and support the needs of the parent as well as the child

Offer guidance from early fetal development through to birth and beyond

Give practical
information to parents to streamline visits to the doctor

Allow patients to easily connect with hospital staff and classmates through the app

Initial User Flow

First Drafts And Wireframes

PO homepage (connect selected) Copy 2.jpg

Getting Started

When thinking about the initial wireframes, I wanted to give parents of multiple children the option to filter between the children they wanted to track. For the main menu, I wanted to distill the most important categories into interactive elements to minimize the number of pages that the user would have to navigate. Another consideration was to incorporate big, bold buttons that parents would be able to read and use easily in the middle of the night (often with one hand).

Hierarchy and Taskflows

From the top of the screen to the bottom on the main menu page - you go from doctors' profiles, to resources for children (feeding, sleeping, etc.), to resources for parents (photos, connect). I also started thinking about how to build out two task flows - one for logging a feeding session, and another for registering for a class.

PO homepage (feeding - bottle selected).jpg

PO homepage (connect - resources selected).jpg

Tracking A Feeding

Sign Up For A Class

User Testing and Iterations

PO homepage (feeding - bottle - FINISHED) Copy 2.jpg

Display the age or developmental stage of the child

Rethink the use of animated sliders on the main menu page

Make the reminder more visible

Integrate the buttons more intuitively into the screen

Scale back the size of the fonts and revise the tone of the copy

Initial Hi-Fi Designs

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Edits Based On User Feedback

I designed a specific profile intro screen for parents and adjusted the sizing to take advantage of the screen real estate.

I made a clearer separation between the parent and child profiles, giving more space at the bottom to accommodate a growing family.

I changed the "play" icon to text, making the button function clearer to users. I also offset the bottom buttons for easier accessibility.

People found the deep red accent color to be jarring and too aggressive, so I switched it to the blue found at the top of the screen.

Revised Hi-Fi Designs

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Final Thoughts

Much like life with baby, this project was rewarding and eye-opening. My hope would be to finish building out the rest of the components of this added feature. It was a welcome challenge to build something for a preexisting app, incorporating their branding and design guidelines. It's definitely something I'd love to do in the future.