Go Away
Mobile app UX design for managing COVID-19 pandemic
Overview
Team
Hesam Andalib, Roza Atarod
Duration
1 Week
My Roles
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Story mapping
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wireframing
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User Research
Tools
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Figma
On-boarding and Home page
Tracking Maps
UI for infected person
In 2020, the world was shocked by the spread of Corona virus. It imposed high degrees of anxiety in the society due to its effects on healthcare and economy.
Objective
How can I help people use their mobile devices for managing their anxiety during the crisis and have access to sufficient information to take preventive actions.
Approach
I started with a research to find people's areas of concern at this situation. I categorized these areas and defined my design objective. I started sketching ideas and tested my ideas by involving users in the design process. The main ideas in this design are:
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Using GPS location tracking data to create city heat maps based on travel history of infected users and inform citizens to take preventive actions before traveling to that regions.
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Providing valid information about essential and high-demand products that people concern about
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Designing different experiences for infected and healthy users
Background
Today, every one of us is carrying a powerful computer everywhere we go. We are using it for navigation, making connections, shopping, banking, following the news, playing games, etc. But in the situation of crisis like the Covid19 pandemic, how can we benefit from this power to empower our society?
Though many applications can help us stay at home and work and shop from there, there are situations that we need to go out for any reason. Despite the fact that our devices can gather tons of data from every single movement we commit, we have no information if the places we are going are not infected.
This design aims at presenting a solution to use location data for preventing more spread of the virus in the community. It requires community participation and also presents some tools for city officials to make better decisions.
Design Methodology
Problem Space
1
Empathize
At the first step, we investigated different properties associated with Corona Virus and wrote each one on a sticky. Then we voted each property and discussed its importance.
2
Identify Areas of Concern
At the next step, we sorted selected properties based on common areas that each property is associated with. We identified 4 areas of concern to focus on in our solution space.
3
HMW Questions
At the next step, generated “How Might We” questions based for each category. These questions will be considered for identifying design goals.
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HMW ensure people about the availability of products?
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HMW inform government about possibly infected people?
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HMW help people to manage their mental status?
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HMW help to decrese risk of infection in the society?
4
stakeholders
At the next step, based on the HMW questions, we identified two main stakeholders/users for this project:
The Government and Citizens.
Solution Space
Wireframing
Based on ideas generated in the previous step, we created wireframe prototypes to address the concern areas identified. These mobile interfaces are designed for citizens.
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Usability Testing
We asked 5 citizens to try the prototype and let us know their thoughts and concerns. Since we did not have access to government officials, we could not test those prototypes.
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The Final Design Should Satisfy These Goals
Final Design
Onboarding Screens
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Home Screen
A user who is not infected has different needs from one who is infected.
For a healthy user, the application will prioritize the infection regions information to alert the user for taking preventive actions and avoiding travel to infected areas.
The infection will be submitted by a medical center and once the user is submitted as an infected person, the Home screen will prioritize Medical Hotline for the user.
Example UI for health care provider to submit an infected case
UI If the user is healthy
UI If the user is infected
Geo Location Generated Maps
At any time, the user might receive this notification to be informed about having exposure to the virus
User's location tracked in a week
Heat map of the zones in the city with according to infection cases
Market Screen
Users can explore essential products that are highly in demand and its market is stressed. Suppliers will update the information and the application will direct users to their web/mobile applications to buy their needs online.
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List of highly in-demand products
List of suppliers that have the selected product at the moment
Reflection
In the short period of time I have worked on this design challenge, I found out a lot about different concerns that users have in crisis situations. I explored various strategies to response to those concerns and provided a solution. However, if I want to develop this project in future, I will concentrate more on the following issues:
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Privacy: in crisis, there is a high chance that citizens' privacy being compromised by the presented solutions in digital products. I have to put more time on privacy and interview more users from this point of view
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Data Analysis and visualization: location tracking maps and heat maps are two visualization techniques that I supposed many users are familiar with and can understand them. However, validity of this supposition must be investigated since misinterpreting data can conclude to disastrous conditions.