Elim

Elim is a new mobile app for the elimination diet, a tool that helps identify foods that trigger autoimmune symptoms while offering expert advice and support.

Project Summary

I created an interactive prototype for a new app featuring an elimination diet for people suffering from autoimmune disorders. This app focuses on completing the difficult diet while offering expert advice and community support.

Role

This was a solo project developed for an in-depth UX Design bootcamp where I walked through essential steps of the UX process and dove deep into research & discovery, experience design, usability testing and building the digital prototype.

Responsibilities

• Qualitative Research

• Experience Design

• UI/ Visual Design

• Prototype & Usability Testing

The Problem

Close to 24 million Americans suffer from an autoimmune disease and nearly 80% of diagnosed cases are women. These disorders can leave people feeling tired, in pain, losing hair, losing mobility they once had, isolated and depressed. I wanted to create something to help people feel supported while also providing an essential service which helps them overcome one of the biggest challenges they’re asked to accomplish which is completing the elimination diet so they can eliminate the foods that are making their symptoms worse.

How do you find new recipes, make the recipes, find the right medical team and gain emotional support when you’re feeling terrible?

The Elimination Diet is suggested by many health experts as a tool to understand which foods are triggering symptoms related to the autoimmune disease. The diet asks users to eliminate many of the foods they’re used to eating such as most dairy, sugar, many vegetables and even some fruits to try and identify if any of these trigger foods are causing symptoms with the user. Typically the diet lasts 21 days and then the user starts to re-introduce foods slowly and journal symptoms as they go.

And yet, there is very little help or guidance on what to eat or how to actually complete this difficult diet process.

Finding the right medical and emotional support while dealing with autoimmune issues can be very challenging.

Goal

• Understand the needs & frustrations regarding the elimination diet

• Create an easy way to access recipes & meals within the diet’s guidelines

• Offer ways to connect with medical professionals specializing in autoimmune disorders

• Provide emotional support through sharing personal stories of illness and recovery

Solution

Solve the the problem of completing the elimination diet and address the lack of energy and fatigue users experience while trying to complete the diet.

A tool that not only helps the user get through the grueling weeks of the elimination diet but also gives them access to community support along with expert medical advice.

Overview

During this 3 month project, I started with research and discovery to deeply understand the users and continued the design process to deliver an end-to-end prototype. My personal challenge was to create something original, useful and beautiful.

Research & Discovery

User Interviews

I planned and conducted 5 interviews and 1 survey given to 20 participants to understand the purpose, opportunity, and challenges within creating an app to help the autoimmune community.

I focused my research interviewing participants who had been diagnosed with at least one autoimmune disease. I wanted to hear about their journey to diagnosis, how they were treating and managing the symptoms and if they had tried the elimination diet.

Women make up the over 80% of autoimmune cases so I interviewed only women for this study.

These were the key results:

1. Every participant had tried the Elimination Diet and failed. Most reported feeling too tired and overwhelmed at the thought of trying to change their entire diet and cook new meals while they were feeling fatigued and stressed.

2. Community support was mentioned in every conversation as something that was lacking in the participants lives. They craved support from people who understood and the challenges that come with being diagnosed and treating autoimmune disorders.

3. Expert medical advice dealing with specific autoimmune issues was mentioned in every interview. Participants often felt unheard, misunderstood and frustrated with the medical professionals they came into contact with.

Insights & Learning Moments

Going into this project I thought the main focus should be on the recipes and generating the shopping lists. I wanted to make it easy for the user to make the meals.

Pivot 1: While interviewing participants I realized they were struggling to get through their days. Many didn’t have the energy to cook and a couple suggested having a meal delivery service attached to the app.

I needed to not only focus on generating the recipes and diet guide but offer them a delivery service, so the preparation was simple.

Personas

Sizing up the Competition

Product Strategy

After reviewing the interviews, survey results and competitive analysis, I identified 3 product opportunities that could set Elim apart from other diet and autoimmune apps.

1. There was an opportunity to walk the user through the elimination diet. There were no other apps devoted to this particular diet and none that offered only recipes that aligned with the rigid guidelines.

2. The opportunity to connect the user with medical experts trained to treat and diagnosis autoimmune disorders. Many of the participants went undiagnosed for 6 months to 2 years.

3. All of the participants I spoke with expressed a desire to connect with others who are suffering from autoimmune. The need to felt seen and heard by others was at the top of their list when it came to features on an app dealing with autoimmune disorders.

Identifying these opportunities lead to developing the 3 main features of the app.

Experience Design

First, I mapped out the steps Maria would take to access our three features by creating task flows. This gave me a rough blue print for the apps main features and helped me get started sketching out the first wireframes.

User Flows

Wireframes

After studying the task flows and trying to understand how the user would access the features I built some lo-fidelity wireframes.

Below is an example of the Expert flow and how the frames looked on their first iteration. After completing all of the wireframes using Figma I wanted to test the prototype so I went ahead and conducted my first Usability Test to see how well users were able to complete each task.

Usability Testing Results

There were a few key themes that emerged from the tests. I decided to focus on a few that are explained below.

Pivot Point: Inclusive Design

A few of the users suggested they would rather record their stories than write or read them.

I felt like this would be a good way to practice inclusion in my design. I realized that some people may not be able to see well enough to write out their entire story and that it may be easier to listen and record their own.

I built in a feature to record and listen to stories.

Final Task Flows

1. Elim Meal Plan & Weekly Menu

2. Selecting an Expert

3. Sharing Your Story - Community Support

UI Design

I created a style guide using Figma. I wanted the color palette, shapes, movement, and typography to put the user at ease and create a sense of calm.

Here is an excerpt from the guide

Lessons + Outcomes

Key Outcomes

• This was a tough project to build alone. As the features of the app grew with the users requests and suggestions I felt working within a team would have been more advantageous for the overall product

• I think more work needs to be put into the app in regards to tracking symptoms and creating a detailed daily journal or log so the user can use the data they collect to serve them.

• The foundation was built for Elim but needs to keep being worked on, tested and iterated on to become truly effective

  
  

For more information and details on this case study

please reach out to me at

info@kathrynkorb.com