My Role / Research and Interface Design
Tools / Figma, Adobe XD, Illustrator, Photoshop
Timeline / Research - 10 Weeks, Design - 3 Weeks
This was a 13-week client-focused project created within a senior user experience design course created alongside members of the South Asian Health Research Collaborative at Fraser Health. My specific roles included project management, leading product strategy, ethnographic research, journey mapping, facilitating participatory workshops, and designing the product UI, interactions, and prototypes.
SAHRC is an organization in the Fraser Health Authority made up of a group of researchers, patients from the South Asian community, health providers, and decision-makers. SAHRC is committed to building strong, lasting relationships in the South Asian community and helping build awareness about health research and its importance, ultimately improving the health of the community at large.
While South Asians represent the largest visible minority population in Canada, they make up a very small percentage of research participants. Barriers to participation include fear, mistrust, language, cultural differences, and poor understanding of what research entails. This is particularly pressing for the Fraser Health region which is home to over 240,000 South Asian people and growing.
SAHRC recognizes that they need to make health research more interesting, and that they struggle to highlight the importance of health research.
During the initial ethnographic research phase, we aimed to identify the most effective area to design for the organization. This entailed uncovering problems and goals the organization was facing both internally and externally. We specifically took a look at their community outreach methods. Through our three week ethnographic research with the SAHRC staff, we identified three key insights:
With our findings, we were able to reframe our project into How might we make health research more appealing and inclusive for the South Asian community in the Fraser Region?
How might we make health research more appealing and inclusive for the South Asian community in the Fraser Region?
With our design focus in mind, we developed user journey maps surrounding SHARC’s primary community outreach method which is community seminars/booths. We analyzed the process of recruiting partner organizations to identify major pain points. The map looks at the thought process of both a SAHRC recruiter and a representative of the partner organization through a set of touchpoints. We informed these experiences based upon the staff we interviewed.
From our pain points and interviews with members of the South Asian community, we constructed three personas for our design intervention. I was responsible for the visual design and analysis which determined that SAHRC has a gap in its recruitment outreach towards young adults.
Initially, we had identified South Asian millennials however, due to that being a large cohort, we decided to narrow our audience down further to focus on post-secondary students since we found these interviewees to be more receptive to changes, especially when it comes to topics pertaining to health and well being.
Through consideration of our personas and critical contemplation, our team came up with three potential concepts for our design intervention. I helped write the copy for our concepts based on meeting notes and did the visual design display the information. The concepts were also accompanied by storyboards that demonstrated an example scenario that the concept supports.
Through our research, we highlighted that there is a struggle to engage with the younger South Asian demographic because of non targeted outreach methods. The collective's end goal is to improve the health of the South Asian community, and their immediate goal is to connect with this demographic. These two areas would be our focus going forward.
During this time, SAHRC told us about their Health Research Priority Setting initiative which singled out heart disease is one of the top health concerns within the South Asian community, mainly due to cultural diets.
Based on this, we were about to establish the frame:
Overcome SAHRC's hurdle of outreach towards South Asian post-secondary students in the Metro Vancouver area by educating them about the effects of heart disease, along with the preventative measures that can be taken to reduce chances of development.
Considering our reframed design focus, we conducted a participatory workshop with members from SAHRC along with South Asian post-secondary students. I helped to strategize the organization of the workshop by selecting specific activities from IDEO that were compatible with our participants. The selected activities included: graffiti wall, collage, mashups and 5 whys. These helped us uncover a lot of nuanced information about the participant groups which informed our concept refinement.
A South Asian centric health app that integrates itself into the everyday activities of cooking and grocery shopping. It serves culture-specific meals that are targeted to reduce the risk of developing heart disease.
During the design phase, I worked to create the style guide, led UX decisions, and refined the UI layouts, interactions, and animations.
For many South Asian university students, Fruiticana is a common place to buy groceries. People are naturally drawn to food samples, and when they do so, a SAHRC member will tell them about their organization and the app. A weekly discount will apply to Fruiticana and all the ingredients will be available there.
The app starts by contextualizing itself within SAHRC’s vision for a healthier community. This is to communicate that there aren't just any South Asian recipes, but specifically catered towards helping reduce factors of heart disease.
The home page of the app is a list of healthy recipes and it shows how long each one takes to make. Search filters can be used for dietary restrictions so recipes containing certain ingredients can be filtered out. Additionally, the recipes are low cost, quick to make, easy to pack and prepare ahead of time, as these are crucial factors for busy students.
Each recipe description highlights what makes it healthy, for example, identifying certain ingredients as a source of antioxidants. It also gives recommendations for similar recipes and ingredients that can be directly added to the grocery list within the app.
The grocery list groups ingredients based on the recipes that they are a part of. They can also be filtered by their section within the store. This helps to quickly track what users need to purchase, supporting the time constraint our demographic faces.
Each week a new recipe will be featured to give variety to the dishes and, it comes with discounted ingredients at Fruiticana as an incentive. Push notifications are sent out on the weekend to alert about a change in the featured recipe.
Recipes and ingredients also include other common names for them in other languages. This setting can be toggled on the fly, enabling people to identify ingredients in other languages. This is also useful for ingredients or meals without a well-known English name.
Provide users with health information that aligns specifically with South Asian culture.
Informs the user about health issues prevalent in their community and how to stop the problem at its roots.
Creates a strong foundation for future projects that will address the community’s specific health concerns.
Through this project, the practice of applying various UX Methods within certain contexts became very important to me. I found that in the real world, methods can be nimble and should be applied to different projects in different ways. That is to say there often isn’t a one size fits all “process” when working with various clients.
Moreover, being able to listen and hear the stories of SAHRC and members of the South Asian community made the design process much deeper and relevant as I was able to empathize with people face-to-face. Through this, we were able to develop solutions beyond the limit of us as designers. It was a pleasure being able to steward the design process while working with SAHRC as they stewarded me through their own.
🎉 You made it to the end! Thanks for taking the time to read about this project.
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