Glucose Goddess

A Continuous Glucose Monitor Application

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Consistent spikes in blood glucose levels are associated with a wide range of diseases including diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Glucose Goddess is an application created by Jessie Inchauspe that juxtaposes a user's meals onto their daily glucose graphs to provide a better visualization of how different foods affect their glucose level. This allows users to easily share insights around their diet and glucose with family and friends.

The scope of this project was to create an onboarding flow that would teach users how to use the app in addition to providing them with tips on how to better manage their glucose spikes.

Client

Glucose Goddess
(Jessie Inchauspe)

Role

Product designer

Project Type

Onboarding flow

THE GLUCOSE GODDESS APP

The existing Glucose Goddess app has three main steps:
Users log foods they ate throughout the day.
Users import their daily graph from the Freestyle Abbott app.
Users share a comparison of two graphs on social media.

RESEARCH

I began by conducting user research to better understand people's attitude torwards logging their meals and to gage their understanding of glucose's impact on their health. I conducted user surveys and interviews to gather qualitative and quantitative data regarding the following research goals:

SURVEY TAKEAWAYS

To conduct the survey, I created a short questionnaire using Google Forms. The focus of the questions was to better understand whether or not people paid attention to the nutritional content of their food and what tools did they use to track their meals. There were 14 responses to the survey with the respondees age ranging from 22-40.

Overall, users were interested in the nutritional content of their food, interested in logging their food, and sharing this information with others.

INTERVIEW TAKEAWAYS

To gather more qualitative data regarding people's methods for tracking their food, I conducted interviews to better understand what motivated people to remain consistent. I ended up interviewing four individuals in their late 20s and early 30s over zoom.

The main motivation people had for journaling their food was to understand how their diet was impacting their body. While users had varied opinions on how much logging their food actually helped with this, Glucose Goddess provides clear insights on how their sugar and carbohydrate consumption impacted their body.

While many users had tried journaling their food previously, staying consistent was difficult. Logging home cooked meals was especially cumbersome. Once users broke their streaks, they often stopped logging their food altogether.

Logging food was a sensitive topic for a few individuals as their often elements of shame and failure around topics of food and diet.

COMPETETIVE ANALYSIS

After listening to the obstacles people faced with keeping track of their meals, I did a competitive analysis on other food and exercise tracking apps to analyze how they collected this data from their users.
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I reviewed the companies: MyFitnessPal, LoseIt, Abbott Freestyle Libre app.

PERSONAS AND USER JOURNEY MAPS

After reviewing other apps design to track food and exercise, I created Personas and User Journey Maps to better understanding the feelings and emotions of users using the Abbott FreeStyle Libre app and why they would be draw to the Glucose Goddess App.

I created two personas that were distinctly different to better understand their journey when using a glucose monitoring for the first time.

BRAD'S USER JOURNEY
SARA'S USER JOURNEY

PERSONAS AND USER JOURNEY CONCLUSIONS

While the Freestyle Libre app gave users insights to their glucose data that had never been accessible before, many users were unsure of what to do or how to interpret their glucose data. Users were especially confused or frustrated when the data contradicted established guidlines.

Glucose Goddess fills this gap by teaching users how to understand their glucose data in addition to providing personalized methods of managing glucose spikes.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

SCENARIO

People are striving to live healthier lives by using continuous glucose monitors.

PROBLEM

Users have unprecedented access to their glucose levels but they are confused as to how to make actionable changes to their lifestyle or diet.

GOALS

Develop sustainable behaviors that result in steadier glucose levels.

ONBOARDING FEATURES

  • Teach people how to use the app.
  • Teach people the effects of glucose.
  • Teach people how to manage their glucose spikes.

DESIGNS

WIREFRAMES

After I had identified areas of the app that I wanted to highlight in the onboarding flow, I began to wireframe my designs. I conducted initial user testing with these prototypes to gather general feedback regarding the app.
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During testing and reviews, I identified several usability problems with the app:

HIGH FIDELITY DESIGNS

After collecting user feedback from my prototype, I began working on high fidelity designs. I presented these designs to Jessie and gathered her feedback. A major concern that Jessie had was the amount of information that was being presented to the customer.

For this reason, the onboarding flow was broken up into two parts to give users time to process the information that was being presented to them. The first part of the flow focused on having users input their meals. The second part of the flow focused on creating a comparison of two separate meals.

DESIGN SOLUTIONS

Reminders to Import Users Daily Glucose Graph
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Users can set daily reminders to log their meals for that day and to import their daily glucose graph into the app.
Labels for Buttons and Tabs
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Labels for buttons and tabs make the application easier to navigate and use.
Checkboxes for Multi-Select
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Checkboxes make it more clear that the user should select multiple items from this menu.
Tab for Hacks
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Hacks tab allows users to review tips on maintain steady glucose spikes at any time.
Updates to Glucose Graphs
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Updates to the glucose graphs such as labels for the green and red zones improve the readability of the graphs.

THE FUTURE OF GLUCOSE GODDESS

For future iterations of the app, I envisioned a Hacks tab that would allow users to input foods to predict their glucose spikes and to see how different hacks impacted those spikes.

I then added the following features to start collecting the data necessary to build these predictive models:

Profile Page
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Allows the app to collect data that impacts a user's glucose spike.
Tags for Hacks
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Tags for different hacks allows the app to collect data on how they curb a user's glucose spike.

CONCLUSION

Overall, the project was a success. Most of the users tested said they would use the application to manage their glucose levels.

Jessie was very happy with the final outcome and said that she enjoyed working with a designer that went above and beyond what she had asked for while still staying true to the brief.

FUTURE ITERATIONS

1. Manage A1C levels
2. Barcode scanner for food items.
3. Serving size to Add Food page.
4. Improve usability of graphs.
5. Automatic import of Abbott Freestyle app graphs

RETROSPECTIVE

Collaborating with Jessie was a great opportunity working on a project with real stakeholders. While Jessie was hesitant about some of my proposed updates to her app, she was easily convinced once she saw high fidelity prototypes of my designs.
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One of the biggest challenges of this project was working off of a UI system that I did not have complete access to. If I had more time working on Jessie’s app, I would build out a more robust design system to modernize the overall aesthetic of her app.
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