Lead front-end developer & designer responsible for conceptualizing, designing, prototyping and implementing the UI for Sahara. Conducted user research and interviewed doctors and patients. Published a literature survey to corroborate our solution. Lead mentor for Sahara 2.0
Skills
Research
Interviews
User Flows
Wireframing
UI Design
Prototyping
Programming
Sensor Technology
Recognition
Secured a grant of ~$27,000 from the Government of Karnataka, India and received funding of $1500 from HeARTHealth Technologies. Awarded 'Best Project of Social Relevance' among 200 groups.
Healthcare is broken. Beyond reach for some.
According to the report, “Future of India: The Winning Leap” by Price Waterhouse Coopers, the availability of doctors in India is only 0.67 per 1000, compared to 2.3 in US, 1.8 in China and Brazil. The contrast is even more pronounced when comparing urban and rural areas within India. In metropolitan regions, the availability is 1.33 doctors per 1000 people, but this number plummets to a mere 0.30 in rural areas. This staggering four-fold difference highlights the acute shortage of medical professionals in India's rural regions.
Rural healthcare in India faces a variety of challenges. Due to the vast size of the rural areas, there is often a shortage of hospitals and clinics, making it difficult for people to access medical care. Road infrastructure is also poor, which further compounds the issue of accessibility. Moreover, a lack of health awareness and literacy among rural populations can make it difficult for them to understand the importance of seeking medical care. This often results in delayed treatment or no treatment at all, exacerbating the problem of rural healthcare in India.
Healthcare disparity should be non-existent.
Introducing Sahara
Thanks to the advent of digital health, digital technology has been helping us transform unsustainable healthcare systems into sustainable ones by equalizing the relationship between medical professionals and patients by providing cheaper, faster, and more effective solutions for diseases. This rise of the internet age is a great benefit to the rural or hard-to-reach communities where specialists aren’t readily available. The proliferation of smart devices capable of high-quality video transmission opened the possibility of delivering remote healthcare to patients in their homes, workplaces, or assisted living facilities as an alternative to in-person visits for primary and specialty care.
Sahara involves the use of electronic communications and software to provide clinical services to patients in an assisted living facilities without an in-person visit to doctors via secure video and audio connections.
Design Process
Discover the Problem and Explore Solutions
India is a developing country with millions of people. The big cities such as Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi have excellent infrastructure and medical facilities, making them more favorable to reside in. However, rural areas and small towns lack this kind of infrastructure. Those living in rural areas have difficulty traveling back and forth to the big cities where they get the necessary facilities. The poor condition of the roads makes it difficult for the aged and the sick to travel. The doctor-to-patient ratio in India may be as low as 1:2000, if not lower.
Observation & Interviews
The team visited 17 centers (PHCs and District Hospitals) in 4 states (Bihar, West Bengal, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh) without any prior appointments to record the ground conditions of these centers. The survey covered basic questions like no. of beds, availability of medical staff, and nearest hospital with better facilities; detailed questions like time taken for lab culture, average patients treated per day, availability of facilities for pregnant women, and so on. The team also interviewed a few patients during this survey.
Upon interviewing the member in charge of these units, around 89% of rural patients have to travel nearly 8km on average to access basic medical facilities. The cost of services provided to the patients by these centers in rural India is free. Around 80% of the doctors spend roughly 2 minutes with the patient during these check-ups. The survey observed that patients were happy regardless of the poor services provided by PHCs and CHCs.
Competitive Analysis
I researched existing solutions to find out their strengths and weaknesses. I also looked into competitors that target subset of my target population or provide similar services in a broad sense.
Define the Users and Design Decisions
We directly synthesized the previous research without any persona since the main focus was to make healthcare accessible to every rural being irrespective of their age, gender, or economic status; and to highlight my target users' goals, needs, and pain points.
The previous research findings and the vivid user profiles helped us decide on which design perspective to take.
Using convergent thinking, we were able to narrow down the solution ideas and ultimately found one that would work best
Design and Iterate
Low-fi Paper Wireframes
Considering our target audience, we wanted to create a look and feel that would resonate with rural folks, and creating a visual direction ensured that we were aligned and consistent across our designs. Sketching and annotating allowed for us to work through the logic of how our content should flow, and helped to lay the groundwork for the overall experience
Medium-fi Wireframes
After a round of usability testing via our paper prototype, we proceeded with medium-high fidelity Figma wireframes and prototype
Code & Integrate
Wireframes, annotations and prototypes provided a base structure for us to work off of and allowed us to validate and test our final product. The application was integrated AWS to secure the data and the sensor data were sent to cloud via AWS IoT Core.
Final Result
Next Steps
From getting our hands dirty with basic user research, developing user personas and flows, to the stages of prototyping and eventually building our product to the public, we got the opportunity to experience the design and software development process as a team. Learning how to communicate all of our ideas clearly and concisely, while honouring the work we put into the project was a huge learning moment.
However, if we were given more time, we would have curated a design system and built a better User Interface (UI), making it more consistent and intuitive.
Design System
I established a design style guide to help standardize all the elements needed to create the high-fidelity prototype. I selected Source Sans Pro for the website as it provides a wide range of characters and is designed to maintain optimal legibility across sizes. I've used Material Symbols from Google for all the necessary icons. Blue is often seen as a sign of reliability and thus is kept as our primary color.
High-fi Wireframes
Since our first version of the app was live, it was easier to make changes directly to our high-fi prototypes. My goal in designing these screens were to keep them simple and yet minimal to focus more on the functionality.
