Track Health with Digital Payments
TIMELINE
2 months
CLIENT
NUS and IBM, school collaboration
*personal redesign of a past project
ROLE
UX Designer
Problem
In Singapore, chronic illnesses are one of the top causes of death. Often caused by lifestyle choices, such as the food we eat. Dieting is a huge part of nutrition but this is difficult when our diet is rooted in hawker food. Why do users find it hard to change?
My Role
This was a school project in collaboration with IBM on 'Improving Patient Engagement in Healthcare'.
With my teammate, we led the design, user research and development of this project from end to end.
User Research
We scoped our project in the space of 'prevention'. We targeted users between 50s to early 60s. This is the adulthood that immediately precedes the onset of old age. They lead normal lives but are at risk of their chronic condition worsening.
EXPERT INTERVIEWS
01 Grappling with a sudden lifestyle change makes it painful
The major cause of chronic illnesses are the result of unfavourable lifestyle choices. These decisions develop over the years, making it habitual and hard to readjust.
02 Lack of proper education
Users set unrealistic goals for themselves thinking it can be done overnight. They overlook the importance of meal planning and are confuse about nutrition intake.
03 Preferring the easy way out
For late middle ages, they feel that education takes too much effort. Convincing them to eat well is idealistic, and medication is more efficient.
USER INTERVIEWS
01 Piecemeal information on nutritional facts
Information from the internet or from their healthcare providers comes in bits and pieces. There is information overload and they don’t know how to follow it.
02 Troublesome to keep track of their consumption
Keeping track is usually done subconsciously as a mental note in their head and then forgotten later.
03 Inconsistent decisions makes maintaining difficult
Users are often influenced by cravings, this results in the tendency to overeat.
04 Convenience is king
The ubiquitousness of hawker centres makes discipline hard.
CRITICAL DISCOVERY
The following factors added a layer of complexity to this project:
01 Relationship between the store owner and the user
Users who eat at a store because they developed a friendship. As such, a solution that forces users to eat a new dish from a new owner, will not be sustainable.
"I know the store owner, I always eat there to support him!"
02 Nature of hawker food
Food is prepared as a whole and each element is unique to the dish. For example, the rice in chicken rice is what makes it special. Replacing it with a healthy substitute, takes away its essence.
"...how can chicken rice be eaten with brown rice?"
OUR USERS
From the interviews, we defined 3 user archetypes, and mapped them to their respective jobs-to-be-done.
The Learner
"My doctor tells me I should cut down on sodium, does chicken rice have too much sodium?"
JOBS TO BE DONE:
I need a way to have easy to understand nutritional facts so that I can make more informed choices at the hawker centre.
The Repeat Offender
"I only realise I've overeaten after I'm done. But it's okay, I'll just tell myself to cut down in the next meal"
JOBS TO BE DONE:
I need nudges to stay focus so that I can remain motivated.
The Hurry-er
"It's hard to remember. I sit, I eat, I go"
JOBS TO BE DONE:
I need a way to effortlessly track my food intake so that I can remain accountable to health.
Defining the Problem
How might we integrate the hawker food lifestyle with dieting, to encourage the middle ages to moderate their food intake?
Process
Before we defined our problem, we deep dived into our users to understand them better. The goal was to diverge and discover as much about them first and find patterns after.
Interviews with dieticians and medical experts.
Shadowed users during lunch breaks at hawker centres and foodcourts.
As-Is Mapping to understand user journey. Affinity Mapping to identify patterns.
Throughout the users' journeys, we found a recurring theme - "food". This helped us center our further research in the space of dieting and hawker food.
Solution (Redesigned)
Below, you will see our earlier designs and solution. After the project, I redesigned the app interface with improved solutions.
01 Easy to Understand Nutritional Facts
02 Nudges to Stay Focus
03 Effortless Tracking of Food Intake
WHY DBS PAYLAH?
01 Accepted as a payment method at over 250 hawkers
02 Widely adopted by Singaporeans, with good reputation among the middle ages
03 Aligned with the bank’s goal to "Live more, Bank less"
HOW THE APP BENEFITS DBS?
01 Collection of users’ data - dietary behaviours / hawker trends
02 More adoption towards DBS Paylah
Final Designs
Here's an overview of the app, broken down into 4 main tasks.
ONBOARDING: CREATING A HOOK
First time users can interact with the app instantly without having to create an account. By giving them this free knowledge, we pull them in to find out even more.
Interact with the 'onboarding' prototype here
RECOMMEND: PERSONALISED FOR YOU
As cashless payment grows, with more modes of transactions, the app serves as the main brain to personalise our food choices.
Interact with the 'recommend ' prototype here
TRACK PROGRESS: HAWKER DIET MADE EASY
Staying in check does not have to be tedious.
Interact with the 'track progress ' prototype here
Reflections When Redesigning
Reworking on an old project, made me question every design decision again. As I continue to build my UX sensitivity, I learnt that every interface can always be improved on. At times, I've learnt that there is value in an idea but poor execution can distract from it.