MICROLIFE@HOME

Redesign of a blood pressure monitor application

UI/UX design | UX research | Design for healthcare | Design for elderly

Cooperation: Microlife

My work

Part of current product analysis. Concept one generating. Observer in user test. Define interaction flow. Part of final concept generating. Final UI. All the visual work

INTRODUCTION

Microlife - the blood pressure monitor system

The Microlife BPM A6 BT is a medical device for blood pressure measurements. The Microlife@Home application enables users to monitor the measurements and to share information with others via a dashboard portal and the cloud. It is able to transfer data from the blood pressure device to the application. There is an interaction between the user and the blood pressure device, the phone application and the dashboard portal for both user and doctors. In this project, our team focuses on the UX and UI of the application.

CONTEXT

Target user

This oscillometric blood pressure monitor is intended for measuring non-invasive blood pressure in people aged 12 years or older. The potential users are patients with hypertension, hypotension, diabetes, pregnancy, pre-eclampsia, atherosclerosis, end-stage renal disease, obesity and the elderly. Considering the ability of using digital product and the usage context, the target group can be divided into two categories:

The elderly
Younger people with cardiovascular conditions.

Persona

Storyboard

The storyboard shows the most general procedure of obtaining and using the Microlife blood pressure device and the Microlife@Home application. This procedure offers an overview of the context.

ANALYSIS OF USE QUALITIES

Original app

Hierarchical task analysis

The task flow shows the process of how the application can be used. The blue route represents the main functions. The four functions are on the tab bar of the home screen. The pink route represents functions that are reachable in the side menu. The using frequency of each function is analysed to evaluate the rationality of the structure. The result shows the structure of the app doesn’t represent users’ daily using frequency.

User journey

Through a cognitive walkthrough within the group, we concluded the user journey and found some obvious problems. The journey can be divided into 1) first time use and 2) regular use. Later on, we conducted two tests on the first time use and regular use with students from TU Delft and recorded problems (Due to environmental constraints, we didn’t test the application with elderly or pregnant lady).

The user journey and problems along the journey are illustrated as below.

Problem statement

The structure of the current app doesn’t fit user’s daily journey, which might cause complex task flows or bulky structure. Combing the problems found in the user test, the current issues are concluded into five categories.

PRELIMINARY CONCEPTS

Ideation

The problem statement serves as a starting point of redesign. What’s more, since the main target user is elderly people, we also think of their issues when ideation. Based on those considerations, we generate two primary concepts with focuses on different sides of the app.

Concept 1

Concept 2

User test

To evaluate and develop the design concepts, users from the target groups were recruited for the user test.

Research question
The aim of the test is to find out to what extent we have improved the app, as well as the positive and negative points of each concept. Based on the problem statement and our design goal, we formulate the following research questions. The answers of question 1 to 4 are collected from a 5 point likert point scale followed with interviews. The question 5 is collected through observation when the participant is performing tasks.
1. To what extent does the user feel the app is smooth to use?
2. To what extent does the user think the app is simple to use?
3. To what extent does the user think the app is clear?
4. To what extent does the app involve the user in his or her health process?
5. What problems does the participant encounter during the test?

Participants: 6
3 elderly person aged 55 - 65 (two female, one male)
3 master students (two female, one male)
(We were not able to reach pregnant lady due to time and budget limitation.)
Procedure

Three tasks

Results
The elderly and youth’s attitudes towards the two concepts are different because of their abilities and preferences to perceive information. But for both of them, the result shows that concept one involves the user the most in their own health process, but feels more complex to use. Concept two makes people feel guided and easy to use. Detailed results are illustrated as following.

Conclusions

FINAL CONCEPT

Converting to one concept

Based on the result analysis, we come up with a new concept by converting the two preliminary concepts with following strategies.

Use tab bar for the main structure to enable a simple use flow while keep the overview structure from concept two to organise detailed functions
Keep a balance between the simplicity and informative display so the elderly and young users can both benefit from the design
Offer instructions with various medias

Interaction flow

To develop the new concept, we first reconsider the contexts and interaction flow. Then the information architecture and UI are designed on the top of it.

Info. architecture

UI