Hello I am Cherie!
I am a UX Designer based in New York.
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I create flawless and satisfying user experience in a digital space.
My experience in the healthcare field ignited my passion in creating designs that could help people achieve their goals and helped me define the type of designer I will be: empathetic and user - centric.
PROJECT
Olakino
OVERVIEW
Olakino is a health and wellness app designed to track steps, calories and workout. It also aims to help users live a healthy lifestyle by staying active and prepare healthy foods.
It was created as part of the requirement in Career Foundry.
ROLE
Product Designer
Design Strategy, User Research,
User Persona, User Journey,
Visual Design, Prototyping,
Usability testing and results analysis
Design iteration
November 2022 - December 2023
Background
Olakino is a Hawaiian word which means the state of health and well - being. I personally chose this brand name because Hawaii is very close to my heart, the state's culture and its aloha spirit.
Olakino is my very first UX Design project as part of the requirement of Career Foundry. Creating Olakino has given me the following key takeaways as I take this career transition:
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UX Design is a process of creating something useful for somebody else's convenience. It's not all about you as a designer that is why a collaborative mindset is very important.
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Know the process. Thinking through from the very initial stages through the final insights and how to make them work all together to produce a product or service that is most useful to the users.
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The value of feedback and making the most of available resources that will help me grow in this new field. I greatly appreciate the inputs from my tutor, mentor and fellow students who are additional boosters to my journey.
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Understanding the problem
In today's fast - paced world, maintaining a healthy lifestyle is important to live a full life. As people are paying more attention to their well-being, health and wellness apps are in trend nowadays. To start of this project, I conducted research interview with the health care industry professionals and college students to identify:
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What do they usually do to maintain a healthy lifestyle?
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What are the types of health and wellness apps that they use?
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What are the identifiable pain points of the apps that they currenty use?
Gathering insights
Through survey and interviews, the following data were collected:
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The top three things that participants do to maintain a healthy lifestyle are: take a walk, do exercises and eat healthy food.
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Users use apps that track calorie intake and steps. The popular apps that mentioned were: Strava, MyFitnessPal and Apple Health app.
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Users preferred free apps that offer basic services rather than allocate a certain budget for premiums.
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The web is their go to resource when getting information about health and wellness or recipe guide.
User Personas
To represent the target users, meet Nancy.
Defining the problem statement and project vision
Career-oriented professionals often struggle to balance their work and personal life because of the demands of their industry.
Therefore, to help them achieve their goals to maintain a healthy lifestyle, this project focuses on three main features:
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Steps and calorie tracker.
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A variety of exercises to choose from, where they can customize a workout plan according to their fitness level, schedule, and personal preferences.
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Easy access to a wide range of meal options that are quick to prepare and delicious to eat.
Defining the MVP
I generated the following key features as I map out the user flow:
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An onboarding page with a simple CTA conveying the purpose of the app to the target users.
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A sign - up page where users can create their account and can be customized based on their goals.
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A home screen or dashboard where users can access their personal information, track their steps and calorie intake and workout progress.
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A page for meal options.
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Designs
As someone who have zero knowledge about designs, sketching my initial wireframes on paper is a great tool to materialize my ideas. Because paper prototypes are quick to create, I was able to easily modify my designs. As I move forward and transformed my designs to mid - fidelity wireframes then created clickable interactive prototypes, it gave me more sense of how it will feel and function.
My favorite part of the design process was the usability testing where I identified three major issues:
Issue 1: Confusion with the progress workout button
Issue 2: Confusion with the share icon
Issue 3: Placement of share button in Homepage
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Three major improvements of my design
Based on 3 major issues that were identified from 6 participants, also considering my mentor feedback, I continually made the following iterations on my design:
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The workout icon of the original design was changed to a more specific workout icon with the name below it.
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The share icon was removed from the original design to avoid confusion.
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As observed in the revised version, I changed the icons and colors to make it more specific. The buttons are arranged in a more organized manner.
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Original
Revised
Results and takeaways
Deciding to have a career transition is not easy but the right attitude matters the most. I wanted to quote Albert Einstein. He said: "Once you stop learning, you start dying."
For this project, the main takeaways are:
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Know your whys. Knowing the whys and the reasons why you decided to create a product will give guidance and will help save effort, time and energy.
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Focus on the problem. Identifying the problem and creating a smart solution will give a more delightful user experience.
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Not being afraid to reach out to professionals in the field. Building relationships with fellow designers is a must in this industry. Accepting criticisms constructively not only contributes to for personal growth but also an important ingredient to be successful in the field.
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Website Project
OVERVIEW
Inspired by my background in senior health care, I created a pseudo home care services company website where the design focused in the usage of white space and simplicity for easy understanding and navigation.
