VoiceCura

The Challenge

To begin with, the general purpose of the research aimed to explore...

How can digital assistants support more human-centered access to health and well-being information at home?

We conducted some desk research to clarify our learning objectives and identify our target audience:

What is the level of awareness of antibiotic resistance and its effects on children between new parents?

Data from studies, papers, and forums exposed that:

1. AMR is a global challenge, and it is considered a silent pandemic.

2. Some studies report relevant gaps in parents understanding of antibiotics

‍User Research

Practicing user-centered design requires talking to actual users, so we conducted interviews and surveys with parents who have experienced their children being sick at least once and been prescribed antibiotics.

The goal was to learn the parent's knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes on AMR and antibiotic medication for children.

Key Findings

User research showed that there are general misconceptions on the right usage of antibiotics and it’s long term effects on children

1. Almost half of surveyed parents stop the antibiotic treatment when the children stops showing symptoms
2. All parents mentioned they have different sources of information about medication.
3. Our target has very limited spare time because of how time demanding taking care of a kid of 0 - 3 years old can get

User Persona

Since it's not possible to create a solution that works for everyone, we synthesized the research data into a user persona. Meet 30-year-old Maria:

We took these insights and identified opportunities: we wanted to learn how to deliver awareness and information in a quick, easy to understand way, while promoting and building a community of common knowledge between target users:

HMW help inexperienced parents with limited spare time be better informed on the effects of AMR of their children’s health

Point Of View

Next we synthesized our knowledge about the user, her needs with insights:

Maria is a busy 30-year-old new mother who worries when her child falls sick with unfamiliar symptoms. Being an inexperienced mother, she is unsure which sources to trust when it comes to medication. She needs a way to access reliable information on the right way to keep their child’s longterm health while feeling understood & supported in a moment of distress.

We designed an Experience Map. This tool helped highlight and uncover pain points and opportunities to be considered and used while designing the solution. It’s useful for understanding a general human behavior.

We diagramed the successful path of our target user completing the task of researching keywords and playing the generated findings using our service.

The interaction is done with throughout 2 channels, a voice assistant (VA) in the VoiceCura app and with Alexa, as a skill.

Link to Experience Map and User Flow

Wireframes

Next we sketched in order to visualise the solution, generate ideas and define the screens.

We also wireframes and prototyped the voice interaction with tools such as Prototype and VoiceFlow.

Storyboarding

To further clear the picture of different interaction scenarios where VoiceCura is be useful, we created a storyboard; a powerful visual communication tool.

Identity

We picked orange as a main color since it promotes positivism and optimism. 

We developed a service that utilizes AI to extract data from various sources (parent forums and scientific literature). The information is combined and validated, and then presented in engaging formats such as podcasts and infographics.

Our goal is to provide new parents with easy-to-comprehend information about antibiotic medication and AMR presented in concise, synthesized formats.

Our service has 4 key features:

1. Researching through voice interaction in the app or through Alexa
2. Finding content generated by other parents in the app
3. Connecting with other parents in the forums page
4. Listening to the curated generated podcasts handsfree