Pill Buddy – Google UX Certification

Contextualizing the Problem

According to a report published to the NIH, 75% of Americans do not take their medication as prescribed. One of the reasons listed is that people forget to take medication, especially if they are prescribed more than one medication at the same time.

I wanted to create an app that would help people remember to take their medication on time and consistently.

Research Methodology

I conducted foundational research by interviewing friends on if they would be interested in a medication reminder app and what their expectations and needs would be. Participants said that they would be interested in such an app since they forget to take their medication and have trouble remembering if they already took all their doses for the day. Some participants liked the idea of the app, but were concerned about privacy. Based on my interviews I created personas to get a better idea of the user group. I also conducted a competitive audit to understand the current medication reminder apps on the market and find any gaps that could be filled.

Based on my foundational research, I created a low-fidelity prototype for my medication reminder app, Pill Buddy, and conducted 5 usability tests to get feedback on my prototype. Usability tests were conducted through Zoom and took an average 15 minutes. Participants were selected from a convince sample of my friends, most of which are in college or recently graduated. Participants were asked to complete a series of tasks and speak their thoughts out loud as they perform the tasks. Sample tasks include: checking off that they took their Vitamin D medication for the day and adding a new medication to be reminded about.

Link to prototype - https://www.figma.com/proto/lDquSevVhWOmPWKLG8ZHFC/Project-3---Pill?node-id=1-2&scaling=min-zoom&page-id=0%3A1&starting-point-node-id=1%3A2&show-proto-sidebar=1

Insights

There were three main findings from the usability study.

1. Users wanted to be able to add reminders to take medication more than once a day. The low-fi prototype only had a notification feature for once a day. The notification feature was updated in the next iteration prototype to include the ability to add multiple reminders a day to support users who are on medication that needed to be taken multiple times a day.

2. Users were unsure how to delete medication after they were finished with their prescription. It was unclear how to delete medication reminders in the low-fi prototype. The next iteration prototype featured a big delete button in the notification menu to make the delete process more visible.

3. Users who cared for others wanted to be able to add reminders for others. Some participants asked if there was a way to separate medication lists between themselves and others since they were caretakers for older family members and wanted to be able to track their family members medication usage as well. The request was noted but no action was taken in current iterations due to time constraints.

Impact and Results

After reviewing the results of the usability study I created a Hi-Fi prototype that addressed some of the gaps gathered from the study.

Link to Hi-Fi prototype - www.figma.com/proto/lDquSevVhWOmPWKLG8ZHFC/Project-3---Pill?node-id=54-717&scaling=min-zoom&page-id=0%3A1&starting-point-node-id=54%3A717&show-proto-sidebar=1

Next steps for the project are to conduct additional usability tests using the Hi-Fi Prototype to gain feedback on what works well and to discover additional pain points, develop and implement the caretaker feature to allow users to track medication for someone they care for, and to improve accessibility features such as language color, and icons.