Project Canary
Giving care-givers and their distant loved ones a peace of mind
Sonova Innovation Labs ✦ 2022
Overview
Last summer, I got hands-on experience in patient-first design at Sonova’s Innovation Lab in Communitech! Sonova is a global leader in hearing care solutions. Sonova Innovation Labs works within Sonova to explore and test digital solutions that support the future of health.
My team mainly worked on our proof-of-concept (PoC), Project Canary. Canary is an iOS and Android app developed by Sonova aimed to give caretakers peace of mind when living away from their elderly loved ones undergoing their hearing care journey.
My Role
✦ UX/UI Designer
My Team
✦ 1 Lab Director
✦ 1 UX/UI Lead
✦ 1 UX Intern (me)
✦ 1 Developer Lead
✦ 2 Developer Interns
Timeline & Status
✦ April - August 2022
✦ Completed testing
✦ Problem Identification
“How might we bring a peace of mind to care-givers when their far away from their loved ones with certain medical conditions such as hard-of-hearing.”
✦ User Context
Our Users
This project catered to two types of users.
Meet Emma
An elder who’s children have left the nest and is living on her own. She hopes to stay connected with her loved ones but isn’t too tech-savvy.
Meet Steven
Emma’s son, who lives a town away but gets anxious about his mother’s well-being. He hopes to find a way to stay connected with his mother that’s fast and informative.
✦ Solution
Create a mobile app that monitors Emma’s well-being and enable easy communication.
For our Proof of Concept (PoC), we wanted to focus on four main features.
Health Statistics
Like the default fitness app, we planned to put health-related graphs to the app for both Steven and Emma can observe, analyze, and possibly predict the state of Emma’s well-being.
Notifications
Steven will get certain notifications about Emma if her health is in danger or if she’s doing really well that day.
For example, if Emma fell (with her phone on her) Steven would know through the app.
Check-Ins
Steven will be able to send short surveys or activities to Emma as a way to “check-in” on her, her health, and mindset.
Wellness Goals
Each week, Emma sets herself a goal on the app that could improve her well-being (i.e. walking everyday). She tracks her progress through the app and the app updates Steven and Emma on her achievements.
✦ Prototype Highlights
Emma’s Check-in
Steven just sent you a check-in reminder! Fill out this simple form and let Steven know you’re doing great today.
Steven’s Check-in
Emma just finished her check-in activity you sent to her 10 minutes ago!
Check out her answers and see she’s doing fine for today.
Emma’s Stats
You walked 5,000 steps today! Closer to your weekly goal of 5,000 every day.
Head to your wellness page to see how else your health has changed.
Steven receiving Emma's health alert
This week in particular Emma hasn’t been moving the recommended amount.
Check her health statistics to see if it’s an effect or is affecting other parts of her well-being.
✦ Context
Picking up where we left off.
When I joined the lab, Project Canary had already completed the 1st diamond of Double Diamond framework. Therefore, there already were personas, user journey maps, and mockups for me to reference.
After catching up, I worked on the 2nd diamond - test, redesign, and deliver the interactive prototype to external stakeholders and development.
While referring to the Double Diamond design model, my team and I worked in 2-week sprints to prepare the Proof-of-Concept (PoC) for user testing.
✦ User Testing Plan
Outlining plans for two user groups and three features.
Below are the three tasks each user group is asked to check the value and usability of the four PoC features.
After having the testing interactions outlined, I took the screens relevant to the tasks and ran five user interviews with the previous designs.
✦ Goals & Measuring Success
Determining how we know the features and app usability work.
Emma User Group
Measures of Success
Used the app all 3 days of the testing period
Fill out the daily check-in
Fill out check-ins sent by Steven
Check and understand health statistics
Steven User Group
Measures of Success
Used the app all 3 days of the testing period
Find Emma’s check-in results
Find and understand the Wellness Page
Demonstrate on the survey that they understood the health alerts
✦ Feedback
70% of users valued our check-in, messaging, and notification features
Using UserInterviews.com, we found a majority of users were parents or people who were already caretakers within the following week.
The interviews ran about 15-30 minutes on Zoom and as I facilitated my mentor helped take notes. After the testing period, they’d fill out a survey with additional questions.
However, we needed to improve wayfinding and text.
#1: Unintuitive App Layout
3/5 users
mentioned some functions of the app were confusing to navigate.
5/5 people
could not find the notifications from Emma in the Profile section.
#2: Inaccessible
4/5 users
mentioned some buttons were too small to hit and some areas of text were not legible.
For example, changing and reading the dates on Wellness page the charts was a struggle.
✦ Iteration: Structuring App Navigation
No one knew message updates would be found under Profile.
From the original design, users demonstrated confusion when looking for recent responses because when you think of “check-in” you’d want to go into the Check-in page. No one would’ve guessed it would be under your Profile.
In addition, the UI did not scream “button!” to the users either.
Moved message updates to Updates.
In my iteration, I made a Updates tab in the Check-in page to contain all the check-in responses. This not only is easier to find but it also shortens the amount of actions the user needs to carry out.
I also made sure the buttons screamed “button!” by having active and inactive states.
✦ Iteration: Improving Accessibility
Improving accessibility.
I increased all the font sizes and used AA contrast colours according to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). However, these changes made me redesign elements across the whole app (i.e. if the font is too big, the entire design may shift around).
I also redesigned all the buttons across the app to take on their full container width and increased padding to make it more obvious it's a button that is easy to click.
✦ Design Systems
Building design systems for consistency and accessibility.
I love making components in Figma and finding opportunities to optimize consistency and customizability. Below is a section of our Design System page in Project Canary's Figma file that categorizes all the components related to user input.
Doing this detailed-focused task speeds up the design process since you only need to make the component once rather than every time you make a new screen. The design system also improves uniformity across the designs, which helps with development and makes the app look professional.
✦ Key Takeaways
A robust toolkit.
Working with developers.
This term, I collaborated with developers and learned how to consider constraints, export designs, and effectively communicate our concerns and needs for a great user experience in meetings.
Sharing my design decisions.
I learned to communicate my design ideas more effectively through daily check-ins and weekly standups with my team.
I also learned to accept feedback while still standing my design choices for the best user experience.
Research in the health industry.
During my internship, I worked with a new user base and conducted interviews with healthcare professionals, engineers, and user of Sonova.
I gained more confidence in user interviews and incorporating that information into new designs.
Here are the tools I got to learn and practice during my internship!
✦ Overall Experience
Dear Sonova,
As my first step into the healthcare industry, I really liked working at Sonova. My team was supportive and knowledgable which helped me grow significantly as a designer. My time here exposed me to new perspectives of pain points and current solutions for people with hard of hearing, making me more passionate to discover other industries and problem spaces.
Thanks Sonova for being my first hybrid work placement and letting me fill up the room with sticky notes!
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