Flo Case Study
Integrated app feature design
Overview
Flo is an AI-driven women’s health product with solutions for girls and women at every stage of their life. Flo already provides users with a service that supports female health, but users do not have the opportunity to receive a digital health consultation through the app. For this personal project, I created a new telehealth video feature embedded within their app. I did not work for Flo. Utilizing their existing UI, I designed and tested this new feature and integrated it into the Flo iOS app.
Introduction
As the fastest growing AI-driven women’s health product with solutions for girls and women at every stage of their life (start of menstruation, cycle tracking, preparation for conception, pregnancy, early motherhood, menopause), they offer the following features: period tracker and ovulation calendar; daily health insights; health assistant; pregnancy and post-pregnancy modes; and secret chats. While they collaborate with a large team of scientists, doctors, health experts, universities and other organizations to deliver content, they do not currently have the option for a digital health consultation.
Virtual health consultations have grown immensely during the covid-19 pandemic as patients who needed services were often encouraged to stay home. Currently Flo provides a personal health report to its users which contains all of the information they enter, as well as AI data analytics. This can be downloaded by the user and sent to their doctor. Flo already provides users with a service that supports all stages of female health, but users do not have the opportunity to receive a digital health consultation through the app. This project will focus on how Flo can better serve it’s users by providing a virtual video consultation in support of women’s health needs.
Research
In order to understand how I could best integrate a telehealth feature into the Flo app, I needed to have a strong understanding of how telehealth apps work, as well as the Flo app itself. I began by conducting secondary research on telehealth and female health related services and apps.
Competitor Feature Analysis
After learning more about the telehealth industry, I identified several different indirect competitors to analyze their features and best practices. This helped me to understand the booking process and also the gaps where this feature could stand out.
Provisional Personas
For the purpose of this project, I wanted to narrow the scope down to users who are specifically using Flo to track their period. I created five provisional personas for Flo users that may be interested in this feature.
User Surveys & Interviews
I began by conducting user surveys to understand more about users' experience with both period tracking apps and telehealth. Through the survey, I was able to identify five interview participants who 1) tracked their period through an app and/or 2) have had experience with virtual health consultations.
Age: 26
Gender: Female
Location: Berlin
Period Tracking App User: Yes
Experience with telehealth: Yes
Age: 25
Gender: Female
Location: Washington D.C.
Period Tracking App User: Yes
Experience with telehealth: Yes
Age: 27
Gender: Female
Location: Brussels
Period Tracking App User: No
Experience with telehealth: Yes
Age: 32
Gender: Female
Location: Portland
Period Tracking App User: Yes
Experience with telehealth: Yes
Age: 28
Gender: Female
Location: Los Angeles
Period Tracking App User: Yes
Experience with telehealth: Yes
Affinity Map
I created an affinity map from the interviews to understand patterns and areas of consideration when designing this feature.
User Interview Findings
All participants would like to have a better understanding of their menstrual cycle and would like the option to seek a virtual medical consultation for their female health needs. They want a variety of accessible virtual options to consult a doctor for immediate questions and/or concerns. All participants are motivated by the time savings of virtual visits and prefer virtual options due to the covid-19 pandemic. Several of the participants have had bad experiences with doctors, especially when they weren’t able to choose the doctor they wanted to see. All participants that use period tracking apps trust their period tracking apps and are loyal users.
Define
After empathizing with the interview participants, I created a user persona for a Flo user who would be interested in using a telehealth feature. After that, I created the user flow for booking an appointment.
User Persona
I created a user persona based on the motivations, frustrations, wants, and needs of the interview participants and survey respondents.
User Flow
After conducting competitor research, I learned more about the booking process and I created a user flow for an existing Flo user who wants to book an appointment with a doctor through the telehealth feature.
Design
I began the design stage by going over all of the work I had done so far. I started by sketching and moved directly to high-fidelity app screens.
Sketching
I sketched the process of booking an appointment through the telehealth feature on the Flo app.
High-Fidelity App Screens
I created these high-fidelity app screens after sketching. As a part of this project, I designed with the existing look and feel of the Flo app in mind and I tried to reflect the same tone of voice. The colors, fonts, and style were carried throughout my design and I integrated my feature into the existing Flo app.
Test & Iteration
I conducted a virtual usability test with three types of users to understand the ease of navigation, areas for improvement, and areas that require further investigation.
User Testing
I recruited three participants for usability testing. I recruited a Flo user, a user of another period tracking app, and a non-period tracking app user. Participants were asked to book a video consultation call. All of the participants were able to follow the flow and book the appointment with minimal or zero errors and they all noted that they would use this feature. Two participants rated the ease of navigation a 10, with 10 being the easiest. One participant rated it an 8 as they said some additional helper text would make it a 10. Testing helped me identify immediate areas for improvement and iteration:
-
Add supporting helper text
-
Bold/highlight a few areas to increase legibility / prominence
-
Add location to the doctor profiles
Final Iteration
I took the feedback from the user tests to iterate and improve the high-fidelity app screens. I made several changes and completed a final iteration below.
Final Thoughts
This was a really exciting project to work on and it allowed me to solve a problem while working within the constraints of an existing app.
In terms of design next steps, I have identified areas for consideration and areas to improve:
-
Create a “View my doctor” section so users can book directly with doctors they’ve liked and used had in the past
-
Build out doctor section (general page and specialization page + filters)
-
Investigate if there is a desire for people to know their doctors workplace. Understand how specific this should be.
-
Try different scenario to validate different features, specifically on the services feature