It was one of my class projects where we were challenged to think ahead of time and come up with a novel concept. The brief given to me was about " how to improve personal healthcare".
This is my story of sailing the ship in an uncertain ocean to find a solution that could have an impact on the large group of people.
It was a group project where I played a role of a user researcher and UI designer. I was responsible for conducting market study, patent review, complete branding and visual design of the product.
I conducted initial user research to find problems with present healthcare solutions.Also, did a literature review to dive deep into other solutions, performed brainstorming with my professors, created initial prototypes and final visual design.
I practiced the design thinking methodology during this project. This helped me to tackle the problem in a solution-based approach.
During this project I learned various methods of rapid prototyping both for physical and digital designs. This helped me to test my ideas early in my process.
This project was done in a group of two, one of which was a developer. This experience helped me to understand the importance of collaboration.
It all started with a project brief that challenged me to move away from my comfort zone of a traditional design problem to a challenging field of personal healthcare. I started by studying various solutions present in the market. The majority of the solutions were for blood sugar monitoring for diabetic patients, calorie count apps, meditation devices, etc.
Next, I looked for some design patents to broaden my thinking by studying the patented solutions. This helped in poping up some crazy ideas which then become the base for my future venture in the project.
At this point, I had enough understanding of the present solutions and their shortcomings. With this, I came up with a list of different areas that I could consider further for the project.
Next, collaboratively with my guide, I decided to take human nutrition further for the project. The reason it was selected was its large impact on human life and its unexplored nature.
Vitamins are the basic elements that are required for our bodies to function properly. But the modern lifestyle and change food habits have led to a serious issue of vitamin deficiency among every seventh person in India. According to the Times of India, 75 % of Indians suffer from vitamin deficiency. This is the main reason for the increase in the rate of diseases like Alzheimer's.
The challenge was to develop a solution that will help each individual to track his /her vitamin levels and act on it without waiting for the symptoms to show up due to a lack of certain vitamins.
Problems with present scenario
I brainstormed to find out different possible ideas that would fit the modern lifestyle of the people.
After narrowing down the different possible solution I presented four different ideas which were then discussed and further narrowed down to a single idea.
VITAMON is a system of products that collaborates to help the user to check their vitamin levels and compare it with the prescribed levels and then provide personalized step by step guide to recover from the particular vitamin deficiency.
It consists of a device that estimates the vitamins, an app to track these estimates and a 3D food printer that prints the supplements which are at an extreme low.
VITAMON is a system of products that collaborates to help the user to check their vitamin levels and compare it with the prescribed levels and then provide personalized step by step guide to recover from the particular vitamin deficiency.
It consists of a device that estimates the vitamins, an app to track these estimates and a 3D food printer that prints the supplements which are at extreme low.
Check vitamin levels in no time with vitamon device and app
Track your vitamins over a period of time to live a healthy life
Get personalized suggestions on your diet to recover from deficiency
I followed the iterative process of rapid prototyping and testing it with users. I approached each element of the product system similarly. This helped me to quickly test and try my ideas in front of my user before going for a detailed design phase.
We used modeling foam to craft our concept and then tested it with the user to get the feedback. We then incorporate this feedback to improve our design.
And applied a similar method for my app design where we quickly made some paper prototypes and tested it with the user. We gave them a task and asked them to complete it while thinking out loud. This gave us an important drawback in our design, initially in the process.
The app acts as a bridge between both physical products and helps the user to keep track of their vitamin levels anytime anywhere. The app has four main components which make it user-friendly and easy to use.
Helps user to get to know what he/she could expects from the app. This make them comfortable while using it first time.
App has a feature to create multiple sub-accounts on a single mobile device. This helps the whole family to use a single product simultaneously.
Easy to understand user interface which helps user of any age to use the app.
The app gives personalized suggestion for the type of that food should be consumed and allows a user to create a schedule and set a notification for daily supplements consumption.
It was an amazing experience to tackle this project. I am happy with the results we got in such a short period. One thing I would like to improve in upcoming projects is to improve my communication skills. I think we could have given more effort to the user research by actually going to some experts rather than doing it online, which was not possible due to a strict deadline.
During the complete project, there were many such situations when I felt, am I on the right path ? and lots of self-doubts. But I trusted my process and finally reached the solution which made me and my team proud of our work.
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