Whitecoat

Ideation and Vision

As an undergraduate student in 2013, I studied Neurobiology, Physiology & behavior with aspirations of becoming a physician. However, while studying for my science courses, I discovered a web application that I quickly fell in love with called "Akinator, The Web Genius". This website was able to guess any character in the world that you could think based on a series of questions that narrowed down the final result...which was strangely, always right.

I thought to myself, if this app can guess any character in the world, why can't someone else come up with something similar to be able to guess symptoms for a medical condition? For example if you woke up one day and found a rash on your arm; instead of going on google and looking for a possible diagnosis and getting hundreds of results including cancer, you could answer questions to narrow your condition to the best possible results. 

Then I thought to myself, why can't that person be me?

My Intro to UX Design

In 2013, I had no real exposure to UX Design as it was a relatively new term. I started to learn about developing apps and how I could go about taking and idea to production. I discovered that to make an app, you needed to be one of 2 people, a software developer or a designer. I knew I wasn't going to ever love coding and I was always more of a creative so I took on learning how to design, which led me to my newfound love for product design.

Planning & Scope Definition

The process I took early on was much different than the process I typically implement today in terms of how to approach a design project. I follow a 4 step UX process that begins with Research, followed by wireframing and prototyping, then testing and iterating. I was so excited to learn how to design, I quickly jumped into the Sketch app and began attempting to create hi-fidelity mockups.

I tinkered with the software with no clear framework or understanding of who I was designing for and often found myself lost and creating sub-par designs. So I decided to learn more about UX design through youtube, general assembly monthly courses and learning through mentors. I had to go back and do the research. 

Research

I needed to figure out more about the space that my app would fall into so I did a thorough competitive analysis of every app that struck any sort resemblance to mine. I looked into each company's funding, customer reviews, mission and anything else I could find on the apps. I downloaded them all to see what was missing in each one and how mine was a differentiator. 

I created a survey that I had over 400 people, ranging from young to old, take to see what they usually did when they discovered a new symptom they were experiencing, if they had any apps for them and if they would even find an app like mine useful in those situations. I got a great response from the 400 people that took the survey and did a thorough analysis of who I was designing for. 

Mockups & Prototypes

Now it was time to take the research and turn it into something tangible and meaningful. I developed a skill for wireframing on a whiteboard and notepad, I worked with my mentors on what would be some good ways of laying out some of the key features that I wanted to incorporate in the app. I used apps like balsamiq at first but then ultimately transitioned into using sketch for almost all mockups and wireframes. After months of designing several iterations and learning along the way, I came up with a high-fidelity design that I was happy with. I took the designs to InVision where I created an interactive prototype to get feedback on for further iterations. 

Testing

I sent out my designs to some people that knew I was working on this project and had them navigate through the app on InVision. This is probably where I received the most meaningful feedback and learned the most about how users interacted with my app. I found that my designs were not as intuitive as I thought initially. The side drawer feature that was critical to the app was barely noticed and the discoverability of some of the features could be improved. 

Revise & Iterate

Once I got the feedback that I needed, I went back to the drawing board and began implementing the feedback that found most useful and validated why some of the other feedback couldn't be implemented. 

I made sure to focus on making my app as simple as possible switching the side drawer to a tab navigation system at the bottom and made the the question styles more of a "tinder-esque" card system.

Building It Out

Once I had a design that was intuitive, simple and elegant, people started to take note of the app and wanted to help me develop it. I had 2 close friends who worked at large tech companies offer to help build out the app and one business analyst off to handle all business plan and marketing for the app. I brought in only the people I felt would bring a direct contribution to the team. We are currently building out the app, preparing a minimum viable product to pitch for investment.