Designed an app to improve access and quality of sexual & reproductive information for teenagers and young adults
SEP 2018—NOV 2018
This project was a part of an OpenIDEO challenge in Fall 2018 for United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to create innovative solutions for young people's sexual and reproductive health.
Role: I was the only designer on the team. Together, we did a lot of user research and testing that led to the final iterations. I was responsible for creating the logo, the wordmark and designing the end to end interface design.
Young people from age 10-24 constitute over 25% of the world’s population. For millions of young people around the world, the onset of adolescence brings not only changes to their bodies but also puts them at risk of unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV, and dangerous childbirth. Globally, pregnancy and childbirth-related complications were the leading cause of death among adolescent girls aged 15-19 years old in 2015/16.
Adolescents and youth face barriers to reproductive health information and care. Even those able to find accurate information about their health and rights may be unable to access the services needed to make informed decisions and protect their health.
UNFPA - United Nations Population Fund wanted to collaboratively solve this unique challenge and we were given certain goals for the project:
OpenIDEO is a platform to harness collaboration for Design for Social Good where people from all corners of the world collaboratively tackle some of the toughest global issues through launching Challenges, programs, and other tailored experiences. This approach is modeled on IDEO's design thinking methodology. We followed this methodology and leveraged the OpenIDEO platform for our project to create our solution.
Based on the resources we looked into we found out that a lot of young people rely on the internet to search for information because social stigma and fear of embarrassment prevents them from feeling comfortable enough to ask people. When searching on the Internet, answers are not always reliable and can be overwhelming.
Some insights from a research study conducted by Guttmacher Institute:
We conducted 10 interviews with people between the ages of 15 and 22 and we got the following insights:
Based on all our research and insights we decided to create a mobile app that tackles the problem. Fraga is an app that 14 to 24 year olds can use to chat with a chatbot and learn get all their questions answered and learn anything they want to about sexual and reproductive health. It designed for the user to receive reliable information and eliminate any embarrassment and prejudice in asking sexual health-related questions. It addresses the problem by connecting young people to reliable and accurate information.
Users are presented two options on the starting screen—Either to directly start a private and anonymous chat or to set up an account to save their chat history and bookmarks. They then go through a quick onboarding process in which they are presented with all the key features of the app.
Privacy and anonymity are the key strengths of the app. We also created a gender inclusive onboarding process to provide the best answers to our users. Post the onboarding process the users land on the home screen where they can start conversations and asking their questions. The home screen is also where history of previous chats and all bookmarks made by the user appear.
Chat is the primary feature of the app. The Fraga chatbot would be powered by natural language processing and Artificial intelligence to help provide the most accurate answers for our users.
Info Hub is a central information hub that covers in depth information for all topics of sexual & reproductive health—Birth Control, Pregnancy, Abortion, Sex, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Bodies, Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, Relationships, , Masturbation, Health Services, and Wellness.
Each topic contains Frequently asked questions about that topic, helpful videos and infographics, media and various methods and resources. It also contains a list of recommended products. Users who create accounts can also bookmark any information they want to.
We shared our InVision prototype with 24 potential users in our target demographic and gathered their feedback. Some of the insights we received:
I also designed the logo for the app in Sketch and and chose a friendly typeface Lora for the wordmark. I chose a blue color that as it is considered to give emotions such as trust, safe and relaxation. I chose the chat bubbles for the logo as it fits well with what Fraga does and is about.
Some of the features we explored during our design process and some that I think would be great for product expansions: