CARE WITH
COMMUNITY
The UX Evolution of Carina Health, a Group Care Startup
OVERVIEW
In response to the rising demand for accessible group healthcare, our team of 5 UX consultants collaborated on crafting the inaugural MVP for Carina Health. Our client's vision for Carina Health is unique: a user-centric hub, integrating medical resources and fostering community for users to unite around shared health objectives.
ROLE
UX Researcher & Product Designer
DATE
January/February 2024
3 Weeks
STATUS
Development Scheduled for Q2 2024
UX METHODOLOGIES
Competitive Feature Analysis, Comparative Feature Analysis, User Interviews, Affinity Mapping, Persona, Journey Mapping, Feature Prioritization, Design Studio, Prototyping, Usability Testing
TOOLS
Figma, Zeplin, Notion, Keynote
How might we help patients in medical care groups feel supported by their community and engaged in their health jounrey?
OUR SOLUTION | Carina Health
A cutting-edge platform revolutionizing the landscape of group healthcare, with an experience that:
Provides comprehensive medical group resources and events
Offers event and appointment reminders along with seamless health tracking
Fosters community within medical groups under the guidance of healthcare professionals
SCOPE OF WORK | What is our opportunity space?
HYPOTHESIS
Users in group health programs often encounter challenges in maintaining connection with peers and sustaining motivation, hindering their overall growth and progress within these programs.
GOAL
Harness user insights to develop a comprehensive platform for group health programs, fostering connections and collaboration among individuals, healthcare providers, and peers. Through this platform, patients can actively engage in their healthcare journey, benefiting from mutual support and resources, resulting in improvements in patient outcomes.
Business Research | Where does Carina Health sit in the industy?
We kicked off our research with a business analysis, wanting to get a better understanding of the business landscape. We looked into two different avenues; the closest industry competitors to Carina Health, and Health and Lifestyle apps with social and gamified features.
Competitively, it was clear -
Carina's proposed features would address a gap in the healthcare industry. While group healthcare platforms do exist, they often lack direction connection to the user’s provider or focus solely on serving one medical group.
Furthermore, many HIPAA-compliant apps are primarily designed with the provider in mind, often lacking user-centric features such as gamification.
Health & Lifestyle Gamification Comparative Analysis
USER INTERVIEWS | What is our target audience saying?
USER INTERVIEWS
Conducted 11 User Interviews over Zoom
SCREENER SURVEY
Users have participated in Prenatal / Postpartum group healthcare online or in person
DISCUSSION GUIDE
Question guide designed for uncovering challenges, concerns, and unmet needs individuals face in group health settings
AFFINITY MAPPING | What user trends are occurring?
We distilled our interviews down to key insights, then captured them on digital Post-it notes and organized them by topic area through affinity mapping. Each affinity grouping uncovered trends and insights, revealing actionable opportunities for our app.
INSIGHTS → FEATURES | How can we solve our users pain points?
CONNECTION
MODERATION
HEALTH TRACKING
PERSONA | Who are we making Carina for?
JOURNEY MAP | Where can we inprove our users experience?
With a clearer understanding of our target audience, we humanized our findings by creating Audrey. Audrey revealed that maternity and parenthood can feel isolating amidst the flood of overwhelming information for expecting parents.
JOURNEY MAP INSIGHTS
FEATURES
Expecting parents want to connect with others who are in a similar situation and not feel judged.
Enable anonymous posting options to share concerns and support without fear of judgment.
New parents find they don’t know what to ask at medical visits.
Develop educational resources, such as checklists or guides, to empower patients for active participation and advocacy in medical appointments.
DESIGN & FEATURE IDEATION | How can we solve our user's problems?
To kickstart our transition to design, our team collaborated in design studio to brainstorm and develop our MVP feature list.
Using a feature prioritization matrix, we sifted through a pool of approximately 50 features ideas and idenified 18 key features that we believed would have the greatest impact on our MVP.
VIEW FEATURE PRIORITIZATION MATRIX
INTRODUCTING CARINA HEALTH | A vitual hub for group healthcare
Explore Carina Health
in Figma
⇩
MVP FEATURE LIST | What features did we implement?
LOGIN / SIGN-UP
Onboarding
Tracking Permissions
Wearables Integration
DASHBOARD
Task Checklist
Events & Meet-Ups
Reminders
Module Resources
PROGRAM TAB
Module Overview
Resources
Task Checklists
Provider POC
GROUP CHAT
Report
Group Goals
Reactions
Polls/Quizzes
ACCOUNT
Profile Card
Vitals Tracking
Badges
Privacy Settings
MVP DESIGN | How does our design address user needs?
HOMEPAGE
Right away, users land at the Homepage - the hub of the app.
This screen is where users get all the upcoming event info, their reminders, to-dos, so they're always in the loop of what's going on in the program.
PROGRAM
Next up is the Program Screen - here users can access all group resources.
From module summaries, to tasks, to documents, it's the user's ultimate guidebook to help them navigate the program smoothly.
GROUP CHAT
The Group Chat is the heart of community interaction on Carina.
Users can collect achievements for participating and reaching their goals.
It has quizzes and group goals too, so it's not just chatting – it's an interactive experience.
Our users told us how important it was that their health group be a safe and inclusive space - so we've included a report feature to allow users to flag problematic messages for moderator review.
PROFILE CARDS
Through user feedback, it became apparent that interpetsonal connections helped people meet their health goals, however people found it difficult to maintaining meaningful relationships after the conclusion of the group.
Personalized profile editing emerged as a solution to bridge this gap by enabling users to connect through shared interests and points of contact beyond the confines of the group.
Clicking on a user reveals their profile card, where users can display their custom bio, share interests, and offer contact and social media links for connecting with peers.
User are able to edit their profile card in their account page. Along with personal details and social media, users can also display their favorite badge achievements.
DESIGN CHANGES | What did we learn from testing our design?
We ran two rounds of usability testing, first with a mid-fidelity prototype, then with our high-fidelity MVP, to determine the user friendliness our features.
USEABILITY INSIGHTS
Most people didn’t initially notice the event cards on the dashboard, and were unsure where to find events in the app.
RSVPING TO EVENTS
CHANGES
Relabeled ‘Upcoming’ to 'Upcoming Events’ so user recognize affordance to an event on Dashboard.
Divided Dashboard content into containers so the text is segmented for easier viewing.
Added an event page in Navigation which ‘Upcoming Events’ will source from.
USEABILITY INSIGHTS
On the Program page, People didn’t realize they could scroll to find ‘Resources.’
ACCESSING RESOURSES
CHANGES
To signify scrolling capabilities, make module cards smaller to so ‘Resources’ peaks out above the navigation bar.
USEABILITY INSIGHTS
A few people noted that they had difficulty reading the text on the Group Chat page.
Some users did not know they could tap a message to send reaction.
ENCOURAGING PEERS
CHANGES
Increased the font size in the chat.
Added emote signifier to the chat bubbles to indicate an action affordance.
MOVING FORWARD | Where does Carina Health go next?
RESEARCH RECOMMENDATIONS
GROUP GOAL INDICATION
TAXONOMY FOR GROUP CHAT
FURTHER USABILITY TESTING
GAMIFICATION FEATURES
PROVIDER INTERVIEWS
DESIGN RECCOMMENDATIONS
GROUP HUB
EVENTS TAB
PLATFORM TOUR
MODULE INDICATION
PROFILE CARD
REFLECTIONS | What did I take away from this experience?
As I wrap up my involvement in this project, I'm inspired by the impact that community-driven healthcare solutions can have on individual health goals. Working on Carina Health has been an enlightening journey, highlighting the importance of deeply understanding our users and empathetically tailoring our solutions to their unique needs.
I'm thankful for the opportunity to have contributed to the early stages of this product and eagerly anticipate Carina Health's continued evolution and the impact it will bring, enhancing the quality of group healthcare programs and improving participation and outcomes for group health participants and practitioners.