TreeAssist

Application to assist medical students

Project Overview

Description

TreeAssist is an application for training medical students. Medical diagnoses typically employ decision trees for determining medical diseases or conditions based on a subject’s symptoms. Experienced doctors are usually familiar with these decision trees. However, medical and nursing students may not be familiar with them yet, and this phone application aims at assisting them in the learning process.

My tasks

Conducting user surveys and using the insights to design the TreeAssist app.
Determining a visual identity for the application.

Project Scope

The project was built as a part of my final assignment for the Human-Computer Interaction class. The assignment only asked us to design the wireframes. I further expanded the project to include user research and final prototypes.

Team

Self-directed

Duration

4 weeks

Design Toolkit

Figma

Illustrator

InVision

Procreate

Research

I further conducted user surveys and interviews to understand the users. It helped me understand their needs and problems. It further helped me analyze the current sources they utilize in their learning process.

Goals

To identify the needs of the target users.
To understand the current methods students use to memorize decision trees.
To analyze the interest and willingness of students to use an app to assist them in employing decision trees.
To understand the problems students face while making diagnoses.

User Survey and Interview

I first prepared a questionnaire with open-ended and close-ended questions.
The next step was conducting interviews. I spoke to 10 students between the age of 18-22, currently pursuing a medical or nursing education to gain quantitative and qualitative information on users.

Some survey questions

User Interviews and Survey Insights

Students often come across decision trees and are not often provided with guide charts for the same.
Students usually try to memorize or study the decision trees via their book notes.
Students are willing to try out alternative, more effective methods that help them make diagonoses correctly.

Information Architecture

Next, I determined the information architecture of the application to have a clear idea of the structure and hierarchy. I tried to focus on a simple structure that would be intuitive for the users.

Task Flow

After having a clear idea about the structure, the next step was to map how the users would interact with the key features of the application while completing a particular task. This helped me analyze the user experience in depth.
Given below is the task flow for a user wanting to take a decision tree assessment to get a diagnosis.

Wireframes

The sitemap gave me a clear idea of the structure to be followed and I proceeded with creating the wireframes for the website. I first quickly sketched out the most important features. This allowed me to further digitalize the design through mid-fidelity wireframes.

Mid-Fidelity Wireframes

Design

Style Guide

To create a visual identity I kept in mind the following characteristics of TreeAssist: helpful, clean, and trustworthy.
The primary colour used for the website is Cadet Blue. It is a bright colour that is fun and inviting and reminds one of beaches and skies.
The font used for headings is SF Pro Display. It is a sans-serif font that gives a modern feel. The font used for the body text is Nunito. It is a sans serif font that is easily readable.
Clean and classic icons were used to make the user experience more intuitive.

Testing

After building a prototype, it was imperative to test it so as to make improvements to the user experience based on the feedback and results.

5 students were involved in usability testing.
The method used was Concurrent Think Aloud (CTA).
The participants were encouraged to think aloud their thoughts while completing a given task on the prototype.
Tasks were assigned to utilize the key features on the application.

Overall positive feedback was received. Students said the platform should be available as a desktop version too. Further, students would like a feature to test their knowledge through assignments. I would love to introduce these features in the future.
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