Carble
Food logging app to empower mothers with Gestational Diabetes, 2nd place at Benton Tech Challange.
At a glance
Carble is a mobile app that helps pregnant mothers manage their gestational diabetes. This was a design hackathon sponsored by UXResult and Benton Tech Solutions. We won 2nd place out of 70+ teams.
Role
UX Designer, worked collaboratively in all stages with focus on interaction/visual design
Team
3 UX Designers
Methods
User Research, Ideation, User Flows, Wireframing, IA, Interaction / Visual Design
Timeline
4 - 5 Dec 2020
Problem
Over 200K pregnant women in the US are diagnosed with a temporary form of diabetes known as gestational diabetes (GD). This disorder causes imbalances in insulin production during the pregnancy - causing expecting mothers to watch their blood sugar levels to prevent serious medical problems.
Solution
Carble aims to help them tackle food logging and glucose monitoring as simple and painless as possible. A big part of monitoring blood sugar levels is watching what you eat. By minimizing carbohydrates, people with GD are able to have safer and healthier babies (and lives).
User Research
After understanding the stakeholder’s requirements, we started reading research articles and subreddit threads in order to have a better understanding of our users given the limited period of time. We also interviewed a mom who had gestational diabetes, which yielded the following research findings.
Research Findings
Moms were overwhelmed by the amount of nutritional education they had to learn shortly. Often not knowing what macros are and how carbs affect their blood sugar.
Moms struggled with having to reconcile a low-carb meal plan with their cravings. They just wanted to be able to eat what they wanted without feeling like a bad mom.
Guilt often haunted pregnant women as they don’t want to harm their babies by eating carbs. At the same time, they're frustrated by having to follow a limited meal plan and input different parts of her meals.
Food logging is crucial to managing gestational diabetes. Moms often forgot to log their meals and found the process cumbersome overall.
User Needs
From our research findings, we identified what the users need to accomplish their goals, their current tools, and setting. We also identified KPIs and constraints based on stakeholder requirements and research findings. This goal-task map helped us focus on the main features of our product which shaped our design requirements and user flows.
Design Requirements
Here are the guiding principles we abided by before jumping into ideation.
User Flows
Since we were limited by time and other constraints, we focused on the happy path (shown in purple) for a food logging flow. Through iteration, we were able to build a flexible, yet streamlined interaction model to support a wide range of lifestyles.
Ideate, Sketch, Wireframe
We started creating low-fidelity sketches then wireframes as a brainstorming exercise. Then as a team, we discussed the pros and cons of our features and connected them back to our goal - task map.
Visual System
Due to the time constraints of a hackathon, we had to create the solution while constructing the style guide simultaneously. We gathered examples to build a moodboard by looking into mom-related apps.
Final Solution
My team and I presented this idea among 70+ others to the Benten Technologies sponsors and ultimately won second place for this particular challenge. Here's a list of the key features
Prototype
Scenario 1
Rachel is the mother of 3 kids, with her fourth on the way. Rachel’s biggest frustration is the time it takes to input all the different parts of her meal. She uses Carble to identify all items on her plate. Now it only takes her a minute to enjoy her food guilt free.
Scenario 2
Laura is a mom-to-be nurse that has been recently diagnosed with GD. She is committed to cook healthy low-carb meals and track them daily. Joan uses Carble to search and log a burger variation that can meet her carb limit while enjoying a similar experience to the original burger.
Future Considerations
A few features that we threw around to make this process more enjoyable ( but didn’t prototype due to time constraints and functionality prioritization ):
- Echochambers. Anonymous community chat rooms that give moms w/ GD a place to vent and share their tips, stories, and emotions. This gives them support and guidance from people going through the exact same problems as them.
- Reminders. Using AI, Carble can approximate your meal times so it can send reminder notifications. This helps moms that tend to forget to track every day or those just building new habits.
What I learned
Takeaways
Prioritize and don’t try to do everything!
The very limited timeframe of a Hackathon makes it impossible to do everything you’d like to. This is where setting a strict timeline can be a lifesaver. Ensure you have a clear idea of what you want to prioritize and how long you want to spend on each task. Once the time is up, move on to the next task no matter what.
Building Teams
I’ve realized that one of the biggest indicators of success is the people on your team. There’s nothing more inspirational than working on a team with teammates who are just as, if not more, invested in the project as you are.
