Project Frankie
In 2020, I served as a design and concept advisor on an app aimed at educating young girls and non-binary adolescents about sexual health and development. We provided early stage user personas and brainstormed structural concepts and branding opportunities. We also put together a plan for more extensive user research, content gathering, and build.
My Role:
I worked closely with the founder and visionary for the product, along with two other designers. One designer was focused on sourcing vendors for the build and content creation, and another worked alongside me to create quick prototypes and app concepts.
Hypothesis:
Girls need more reliable and accessible resources for sexual education (in the US)
C O N C E P T B R A I N S T O R M I N G
We kicked off this project with an exercise to brainstorm questions young girls might have related to sexual development. This was a starting point for identifying the user pain points and creating a more focused product solution. Of course, these were just assumptions which would later be tested with actual girls in this age group.
P E R S O N A D E F I N I T I O N
Next, we built out a few user personas to help tell a more wholistic story of the problem we wanted to solve.
I am:
Zoe. I am 16 and live in Taylor, Michigan (avg. income: $27,000) and my parents are pro-life. I’m a competitive cheerleader at my high school which has an “abstinence plus” sexual health program.
My problem is:
I think I might be pregnant. I don’t know what my options are, especially in my area. I can’t talk to my parents about this. I just don’t know what to do or who to talk to.
We can provide:
An unbiased overview of the medical science, access to peers and medical counselling, a list of medical centers in her city/state
C A T E G O R I Z A T I O N
Once we established a set of problems we wanted to solve, the next step was to focus our solution. I reframed this conversation by bucketing the potential product offerings into four categories. This helped us structure a more solid plan for the app, and create a better picture of our full user journey.
Educate: Provide reliable information about biology and medical science, fact-focused and unbiased
Answer: Free open search or a list of recent articles, live content, and frequently asked questions
Advise: Potential for live chat with counsellors who can provide real-time responses and support
Provide: List healthcare provider locations and services near you
P R O T O T Y P I N G
After discussing the functionality options with the team, I put together a medium fidelity mockup of how the app might look and work. I created a clickable prototype in Figma to simulate a preliminary user flow and pressure test our app concepts.
O U T C O M E
My job as a design advisor on this project was to take a few visionary ideas and create a more thoughtful product proposal and design direction. After creating a prototype and user research plan, we also helped source a contract agency to conduct the user testing and build of the app.
Unfortunately, due to some funding re-allocations, this project was suspended after a few rounds of research with the hired agency.