PAIN POINTS

Within is an app that hits close to home, I have a dear friend who I have seen suffer and try to navigate through her endometriosis journey. Watching her in pain for years with little to no answers on how to deal with her endo symptoms made me realize these women need more guidance, love, and a voice to speak out. When I was trying to figure out the top pain points that needed to be addressed, I became overwhelmed with the number of questions, issues, and needs that I received from my friend and her fellow community. This led me to create a very in-depth app that would guide as many pain points as possible. To make sure I included as many needs as possible, I created a whole community of user personas, three of which are shown here. I wanted to be extremely inclusive to these women and had them look over the user personas to make sure every pain point the women had was being considered.

RESEARCH

Due to so many pain points addressing the research phase was incredibly in-depth and I soaked up any knowledge I could find. Between videos, scholarly articles, dissertation on endometriosis, experiments done, the list goes on I was able to compile an immense amount of information that would hopefully help these women. Before I started my mapping process, I used sticky notes for each persona where I would walk through the different steps needed for the app. This process was extremely helpful in processing questions and finding a solution. After this step was completed, I was able to create an in-depth site map that would highlight that would provide a clear vision of what the app would entail. I would often refer back to this to help keep me on track throughout the design process.

END GOALS

Similar to the site map having my end goals for the mapprovided me a clear vision of what needed to be created. Dueto there being so much information, I risked losing sight of the vision and guidance I wanted the app to have. Within needed to have all the information but in a more simplistic broken down explanation. At times, I would find myself getting overly excited where I began to be equally as confusing as the doctors. When this occurred I would look back at my goals and alter theinformation to what it needed to be.

WIRE FRAMING

Typically I find the wireframe stage to be very helpful but in the case of this app, I needed to perfect the flow of the wireframes before I considered moving forward. I had an abundance of ideas for how I wanted the app to flow and look. With each vision, I would create a copy of the wireframes and alter them to see if it would work better. Within had to be easy to navigate and find the information regardless of what the pain point was. In addition to that, it all had to flow cohesively so there was no confusion and no woman would feel their pain point was not as important.

ANALYSIS

When I finally came to a final wireframe, I sent it out to my friend who shared it with her community. These women tested the links and flow of the app to make sure it made sense and worked. After receiving their final feedback I altered some of the pages taking out content that wasn't needed and adding in extra steps in others.

PROTOTYPE

The visual design of the website was based on the concept of comfort so the user will feel relaxed and welcomed. I utilized a warm color palette, gentle illustrations, a typographic layout that had air to it, repetition, and balance throughout. I wanted the women to feel comfortable navigating and learning how to cope with their endometriosis diagnosis. The app offers a sense of hope at finding answers and a community to feel connected with.

Click here to walk through app!

REFLECTIONS

The concept of the app tested well after the prototype phase. Although the app hasn’t come to full fruition, I hope someday it will be able to turn into something fully functional. In the future, I would take away the hover aspects on some of the pages due to that not testing as well. The real reward was the women who helped me along this journey were able to get answers and guidance through use of this app.