Supporting the unique lifestyles of women with PCOS
Interaction Design course
What
Our project - Cysta - aimed to understand the needs, behaviors and concerns of individuals with PCOS and develop a technological solution to support their unique lifestyles. One of the challenging aspects of this project was catering to different user groups and the different degrees to which they experience various symptoms for the same medical condition.
Cysta: A med-tech app for mindful eating, informed healthcare discussions, and personalized symptom management.
Why
PCOS is characterized by hormonal imbalances and cysts around the ovaries. Symptoms can also include weight gain, increased facial hair, acne and sleep difficulties.
There is no cure for PCOS, resulting in long-term treatment and lifestyle changes.
Insights
PCOS is a personal experience.
Different women experience different symptoms to different degrees.
PCOS causes emotional distress.
Many women felt consciousness about appearance or frustrated and angry about why this was happening to them.
Food is a source of constant angst.
Women with insulin-resistance focused on eliminating sugar from their diet.
Lifestyle changes are hard to stick to.
Struggling with “discipline” and “accountability” related to prescribed lifestyle changes and medication was a common theme.
The PCOS Journey
We needed to prioritize insights to form a design strategy.
Features
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Bye-bye, calorie counting.
Women can choose which types of food they wish to eat less of and which they want to eat more of.
•Eliminates obsessive calorie counting.
•Eliminates hard "no-nos" on any type of food.
•Allows for flexibility during periods
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Providing the ability to view data over time without "meeting goals".
Through a visual food journal, women can keep track of what they ate each day. Compared to entering data only as text or number of calories through existing databases, photos provide more context and recall about each meal.Other types of data is visualized in simple and meaningful forms that is easy to understand by the user.
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Maintaining a quick-to-access repository of medical information.
Having a collection of medical reports and tests for easy access to show in-person during doctor appointments proved to be more essential than virtually connecting with the doctor on the app.
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Creating a personalized experience.
During onboarding, women can choose to track symptoms that pertain only to them.
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The center navbar link (+) appears only on the screens in which the user can add something...
...whether it is an entry for the nutrition log, menstrual cycle or uploading a medical report.
This was done to reinforce one of the main functionailities of Cysta - to provide a quick and easy way to upload data.
Paper prototype
Paper prototypes allowed us to craft the skeletal structure of our digital experience. We ideated on how much information should be present in each screen and which components to include.
Lo-fi prototype
We added one more flow - adding a nutrition log. In this phase, we prioritized function over form, focused on refining user flows and tested key interactions through usability testing.
Hi-fi prototype
We created our design system by tweaking the Material Design 3 design system and borrowed most of the system component designs. We used a deep shade of purple for our branding to move away from the typical pink used in many products targeted towards women.
Design Considerations
Doctors are unlikely to engage with patient data if it's not EHR compatible.
Doctors are perpetually busy and will not have time to engage with patients and look at their data unless it is part of their hospital EHR system.
Women have privacy concerns regarding their reproductive health data.
Given the current climate in the United States about reproductive health, women are reluctant to use period tracking apps.
Women are reluctant to engage in long-term data logging.
Various studies, as well as women we interviewed, indicate enthusiasm for tracking lifestyle data only in the short term.