The Covid-19 pandemic disproportionately affected the Hispanic community in America, prompting my team to devise a solution aimed at ensuring that the Hispanic population in Connecticut receives both education and care to combat the virus effectively. In a team of designers, my role was to develop an onboarding and scheduling flow for our app. I also worked with the team to conduct interviews and testing.
We hypothesize that the Hispanic population lacks access to adequate education and essential resources for effectively managing and treating Covid-19.
How might we help the Hispanic community understand how to prevent and treat the Covid-19 virus?
In this case study. I’ll walk you through our process, and how we designed a mobile health app.
My team and I wanted to confirm our hypothesis so we spoke to 5 members of the Connecticut Hispanic population to understand their concerns, responses, and behaviors that stems from the pandemic.
User Interviews
My team and I interviewed 5 members of the Hispanic community within Connecticut. We ensured the interviewers were comfortable sharing their experiences with us. We asked open-ended questions about their behaviors, thoughts, and feelings when they first heard about the pandemic and when someone they know has caught the virus.
Many Hispanic adults work in essential jobs involving physical interaction and face language/cultural barriers, making information access challenging. They have higher rates of conditions like diabetes, obesity, and hypertension. Multi-generational households raise transmission risks.
The Hispanic communities generally use WhatsApp to communicate with one another on their smartphones. Many do not have access to a private vehicle to get health supplies regularly or as needed. They also cannot go to see a doctor in person.
Some Hispanics are not in America legally so they cannot go to a hospital or official. Others simply do not trust vaccines and what the American government tells them.
We gathered a lot of data from our interviews however it is not organized in a way that enables us to translate pain points into solutions. We noticed patterns emerge while we were creating this empathy map such as the lack of access to a doctor. The Hispanic community are scared but united to get through the pandemic together.
The empathy map revealed two user personas; people with Covid-19 and those that want to prevent themselves and the people around them from getting it.
Camila's primary goal is to educate her family to prevent getting Covid-19.
Humberto's primary goal is to get treatment because he is infected with Covid-19.
Translating our personas’ pain points into user stories.
By translating our personas’ pain points into user stories, we were able to come up with specific features for our solution.
Finding affordable treatment and health supplies.
Our solution should enable users to get the treatment they need whether that is seeing a doctor or an over the counter medicine. Users also mentioned the importance of getting to food shelfs and stores for masks, etc.
Vaccines
Many Hispanic adults want the vaccine but don't know how or want to wait and see. Others don't trust the vaccine because they think the US government is trying to abuse them. Our solution should educate users on how safe the vaccines are and how to receive them.
According to a Nielsen study, 98% of U.S. Hispanics own a smartphone, five points above the general U.S. population (93%). This led us to believe that a mobile app is the best solution. My team and I brainstormed ideas of features which came down to two:
Users want an option to find a doctor that is able to speak with them virtually as many users do not have reliable transportation. It is also important that the doctors can establish credibility with the Hispanic community.
Another main use case for the app is to schedule appointments for the Covid-19 vaccine, doctor visits, health supplies pickup, and food pickup.
The Education feature is very simple. Users can read articles or watch videos from trusted resources such as the CDC and WHO. There is no social media RSS feed to bring misinformation into the platform.
My team and I tested the prototype with the 5 members of the Hispanic community in Southern Connecticut that we had previously interviewed.
Questions
Insights
The original goal was that this project was just conceptual as a learning project for college. As we progressed, we were in discussions with the state to develop it but I had left the team as the semester ended before any decisions were made.
Know my audience: When presenting to different stakeholders, it is important for me to understand their priorities and adapt my presentation to resonate with them.
Create screener surveys: Screening our research participants ensured that my team and I were receiving valuable feedback and insights about the pain point we were solving and solution.
