5 FINAL PRESENTATION
4.5 Prototyping
4.4 Development of the UI
During the design process, we went through different versions of the UI. Step by step, we got closer to our goal to design a clearly structured, inviting interface that guides the pregnant women through their prenatal care checkups.
4.3 Colours, font and typography
During our research, we realised that the colours used for pregnancy related apps are often designed in a very stereotypical way - pinkish, light, pastel colours and round, soft, or hand written font. We wanted to create a bright and joyful UI without using supposedly female colours.
4.2 UI trends
For our design, we picked some of the UI trends that we liked and implemented them during the design process. Here, we focused on the data emotionalisation, the skeuomorphic design and the movement in the app.
4.1 Wireframes of the app
The wireframing forms the basis of our app design. We want it to be intuitive and easy accessible. We therefore created a home page providing all the currently important information on one screen. The preventive checkups are displayed here and the women are guided through them by the app step by step. The preventive checkups are displayed automatically to the pregnant women.
4 DESIGN
After the setup of our concept, we started to design the app. We divided the process into different steps: Firstly, we structured the content of the app and established a wireframing. The second step was to go into current UI trends and develop from there our own UI going from one version to the next improved one. Finally, we prototyped some of the app features to give an impression on how it is to be used.
3.3 Benefits of pregnancy helpers
By rethinking the prenatal care process, the women's and gynecologists' experience is improved. The main benefits of the service are summarised below:
3.2 Design principles of pregnancy helpers
How should our product communicate with the pregnant women?
While thinking about how we can improve the process of prenatal care, taking in consideration the pregnant women needs is one of our top goals. Therefore we want at no time to give pregnant women the feeling that the change in the process of preventive checkups is at the expense of the quality of their prenatal care.
We think, it is crucial to give the pregnant women the feeling of being well cared for and that for that reason our communication should be official, trustworthy, convincing, serious and the app structure should be convenient to use.
3.1 Concept map
The concept for the prenatal care service, we want to create, consists of three parts.
The first aspect deals with the service part that we want to offer to the pregnant women. By changing the preventive checkup routine, the examination procedure will be optimised and therefore more quality time for the actual examination is created. By using the prenatal care app, the pregnant women has access to personalised pregnancy related information.
The app is the second aspect of the project. It provides the guidance through the home diagnosis part and increases in that way the efficiancy of the preventive checkup by offering pregnancy related information (week/type of pregnancy), which is constantly adjusted based on the test results and transfers them to the gynegologist/midwife. The app organises the checkup appointments and asks for complaints before visiting the gynegologist/midwife. The pregnant woman can think in peace and record complaints in the app. The gynecologist/midwife can view the complaints via the shared app and can make a virtual or physical routine appointment based on the test results and the complaints mentioned.
The third aspect of the projects refers to the home diagnosis kit for urine and blood testing and blood pressure measuring during the pregnancy. The pregnant women will be provided with these three mobile diagnosis devices to make sure, they are able to monitor a part of the prenatal care comfortably from home. This aspect won't be further extended in this project due to time limitation.
3 CONCEPT
After our research, we gathered enough information to set up the concept for our semester project. We therefore structured our insights and created a concept map to help communicate the different aspects of the service we want to offer to pregnant women.
2.8 User journey: Emma's pregnancy
To gain a deeper understanding of our persona Emma, we created a journey through the complete pregnancy. In this way, we concluded what aspects of the prenatal care could be accompanied by the pregnancy app and how the home diagnosis devices are distributed to the pregnant women.
2.7 Personas and their user journey
To get a better idea of the target group, we created three different personas and their specific prenatal care. Depending on the women's health, age, weight, a.o. the pregnancy timeline might differ a lot. This step helped us concretise our service, because we gained a clearer understanding of the different needs which might occur during a pregnancy.
2.6 Alternative user journey of a preventive prenatal checkup
Based on the current user jouney of a preventive prenatal checkup, we thought about how this process could be changed into a more convenient procedure. The alternative user journey is the result of these thoughts and helps optimising the preventive checkup routine to gain more quality time during the actual examination.
2.5 Overview of the complete prenatal care checkups
This overview was crucial in the decision making on the medical and technical aspects, we want and can cover with our service. By taking a look on how often a checkup is done and which device is necessary to carry it out, we restricted our project to only specific parts of the prenatal care.
2.4 Technology which is necessary to monitor pregnancy at home
For an overview of the current state of technology, we collected examples of all the types of home diagnosis devices, we might need for our project. We therefore had a closer look onto blood testing, urine testing, blood pressure measuring and fetal movement.
URINE TESTING
What technology is there for urine home diagnosis?
No real technology, but test stripes one can urinate on and get the results by scanning using the app.
What can be measured?
blood counts, blood type and Rh antibodies, VDRL (syphilis detection), immune status of certain viruses (such as CMV, HBV, HIV), thyroid function, protein, glucose, nitrite and blood
What is important during pregnancy?
The test for proteine, glucose, nitrite and blood
already exist in Israel and not so “high tech”
A home urine test already exists in Israel and not so “high tech”. It is similar to a test you are used to doing in the clinic. In the kit you will find a glass of urine, a dip stick and a color palette. After giving the urine, all you have to do is dip the stick, place it on the color palette and take a picture with your smartphone using the app. So basically, you scan the stick result and find the result in the app- it's that simple.
BLOOD TESTING
It is very common for women to develop iron deficiency during pregnancy. This is because your body needs extra iron so your baby has a sufficient blood supply and receives necessary oxygen and nutrients. Increasing the amount of iron-rich food you consume during your pregnancy can help avoid iron deficiency anaemia. Some pregnant women require an iron supplement, particularly from the 20th week of pregnancy. Anaemia makes you tired and less able to cope with any blood loss during labour and birth.
Blood test at home:
Athelas can do the cbc (complete blood count):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NupBlR26y8
What needs to be monitored?
. iron value which lack of it can course anaemia
BLOOD PRESSURE
Blood pressure monitoring should be validated for use in pregnancy, in pregnancy hypertension and preeclampsia, or be considered to have full equivalency with a device that is validated.
There are three main groups that needs to be minitored by blood pressure:
Currently hypertensive women, women with chronic hypertension, gestational hypertension or pre-eclampsia
Normotensive women considered at higher risk of pregnancy hypertension by one of the following risk factors:
- hypertensive disease during a previous pregnancy
- chronic kidney disease
- autoimmune disease (e.g. systemic lupus erythematosus or antiphospholipid syndrome)
- type 1 or type 2 diabetes
Women with two of the following risk factors:
- first pregnancy
- age 40 years or older
- pregnancy interval of more than 10 years
- body mass index (BMI) of 35 kg/m2 or more family history of pre-eclampsia
- multi-fetal pregnancy
3. All other normotensive pregnant women as part of standard an prenatal care
FETAL MOVEMENT (KICK COUNTING)
If fetal movement changes significantly or there are less than ten movements within two hours it could be an indication of problems. Many obstetricians recommend daily monitoring, particularly from 26 weeks and there is good reason to do so, as stillbirths claim a shocking 70 lives per day in the United States. The decrease in the movement can be a sign of trouble. A drop in fetal movement also indicates a decrease in amniotic fluid or a ruptured amniotic sac. So, mostly pregnant women are encouraged to monitor or chart their babies‘ kicks beginning in the 26th week of pregnancy to evade any complications.
2.3 Timeline of pregnancy care
This is an overview of all the checkups that are done during a pregnancy in Germany. Some of them take place just once, some of them repeats themselves up to 15 times.
The First checkup is such an example of a unique examination. It is done at the beginning of the pregnancy to receive a general picture of the womans health.
The preventive checkup is repetive during the pregnancy care. Its goal is to ensure an overview of the health of the pregnant woman and the baby throughout the whole pregnancy.
2.2 Other pregnancy related projects
MOMTECH
Momtech is a device using ultrasound to check the fetus’ vitals and consists of a monitor which can easily be attached to clothes with a clip and an ultrasound transducer which is attached with the help of a medical skin patch. The ultrasound transducer together with the medical skin patches are stored inside the charger when charging.
NESTLING
A bracelet checking blood pressure, stress, heart rate and sleep of the pregnant women to track their health. Additionally it tracks at some point of the pregnancy also the babies activity.
HI MOMMY
A pregnancy app, tracking the mother’s weight and showing the child’s development each day.
PREGNANCY DIARY
A pregnancy diary app, which displays information for each week of pregnancy.
BUMP TO BIRTH
Pregnancy app. They show a nice design process.
PREGNANCY AND MIDWIFE APP
A pregnancy app scheduling pregnancy, informing about what is next and communicating with the midwife.
2.1 Motherpassport with englisch comments
The motherpassport („Mutterpassport“) is an official document every pregnant woman receives the first time, she sees her gynecologist during the pregnancy. In this document, all pregnancy related examinations and results are written down and give the gynecologist and the midwife an overview of the woman's pregnancy. We used this document as a guideline for our project and we are referring to it when it comes to the medical basis of our service.
2 RESEARCH
To dive into our topic „Monitoring pregnancy at home“ we went into a research phase. Here we searched for current health care standards, other pregnancy related design projects, worked out the timeline of prenatal care, figured out how to improve the preventive checkup procedure, got an overview of all the examinations and their framework and finally we created a user journey for our persona Emma to adjust our service along her needs during pregnancy.
1 PROJECT BRIEF
WHAT do we want to design?
A service that helps monitoring vitals of pregnant women (such as weight, edema, varicosis, urine test for proteine, glucose, nitrite and blood, blood pressure, blood testing, ultrasound, fetal movement) and is connected to an app and a home diagnosis kit (several devices allowing prenatal care from home). The app should provide information for the women on how to use the devices, inform them when their vitals turn critical, show them general information about the pregnancy (such as how the fetus looks like and how it develops at what time, how being pregnant influences their lifestyle (no drugs, no cigarettes, no alcohol), what they could do to stay healthy (nutrition and sport, no stress, enough sleep during pregnancy) and should share the results with gynecologist and midwife (who will be informed when vitals turn bad and have generally a better overview).
For WHOM do we want to design?
The service is mainly designed for women during their pregnancy in Germany, with a potential audience of women who lives in a rural areas.
WHY do we want to design such a service?
So women could monitored herself from home and have additional health care support to prevent future risks such as diseases that can be developed during pregnancy. Especially, in cases of women who has limited access to see a doctor/visit the clinic as often as required.
HOW might the service work?
Using a home diagnosis kit that connects directly to a mobile which process given data and immediately appear on the app. The information is automatically sent to a gynecologist and in case of risk the patient is required to see a gynecologist for following treatment.
Questions for deeper research
• How do we transfer this knowledge?
**• How could we prevent certain pregnancy related diseases - such as eclampsia?
**
• What should it be able to measure?
• How is the app connected with the device?
• How is the the app structured? (content)
• What knowledge do we want to transfer to the pregnant woman?
General procedure/Overview of pregnancy testing (Pregnancy categorised into: 1st, 2nd and 3rd trimester)
Concerning our device:
• How often does she need to monitor herself?/Which measurements have to be taken when?
• What benefits does this have for her/the child?
• What happens to the data?
Is shown to and interpreted for the pregnant women and transferred to the gynecologist or midwife.
We could also go for less critical conditions - such as back pain, water deposits, nausea, gaining too much weight,… and then connecting this device with an app/plattform for example providing general information about pregnancy/labor/child care/breast feeding, helping find doctors/midwives/hospitals, building communities with other pregnant women, 24-h-emerency-chat, …
• Which vitals should we monitor by the device?
. blood pressure
. body weight
. urine (for protein, glucose, nitrite and blood)
. blood (iron)
. child activity by ultrasoundor kick counting
• Which vitals should we monitor by the app?
. edema
. varicoses
. urine test for proteine, glucose, nitrite and blood
• What is important during pregnancy?
They test for proteine, glucose, nitrite and blood
• What diseases should our device/app track?
We would like to focus on Pre-eclampsia for example, because we can monitor blood pressure, body weight and increased proteine excretion in the urine (with the device) and the rest by checking in the app (Reduced amount of urine? Severe upper abdominal pain? Nausea? Vomiting? Headache? Edema? Visual disturbances?) or for gestational diabetes, because we can monitor glucose in the urine and the rest by checking in the app (Reduced amount of urine? Severe upper abdominal pain? Nausea? Vomiting? Headache? Edema? Visual disturbances?)
• What are the current alternative for existed tech?
Links
Potential audience
https://www.humancoalition.org/2015/08/12/womens-mobile-clinics-reaching-women-in-crisis/
https://www.humancoalition.org/2015/08/12/womens-mobile-clinics-reaching-women-in-crisis/general
technical inspiration
https://www.tytocare.com/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NupBlR26y8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxMoTh74I5IRelated
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