After completing the user research, I conducted affinity mapping to organize insights and identify recurring themes in user feedback. I decided to focus on 5 themes that I thought were able to accurately represent the qualitative data collected. Going through the first stage of affinity clustering allowing me to transform raw data into actionable insights for a more user-centered design.
I narrowed down my findings into five key categories, which made it way easier to spot patterns and really zoom in on what users actually needed. This helped me pinpoint the biggest pain points, their main goals, and what users wanted most in Cycle Buddy. Organizing all that feedback this way gave me clear, actionable insights and made sure I could design something that directly tackled real issues users face.
After synthesizing insights, my persona pretty much fell into place—I created one ideal persona that summed up everything my research pointed to. This persona captured my key user: someone who values simplicity, reliable tracking, and approachable design. It was a straightforward yet powerful way to anchor design decisions, ensuring Cycle Buddy stayed aligned with actual user needs.
POV
I created user Points of View (POVs) to really get to into the shoes of my users. By translating research insights into specific user perspectives, I could focus on real motivations and challenges. This approach helped me stay connected to the bigger picture, making sure that every design decision actually solves a problem or enhances the user experience.
HMW
The "How Might We" technique is a way to turn specific pain points and user needs into questions that guide creative solutions. By shifting from just identifying problems to exploring possibilities, it helps distill insights into actionable queries that keep the design process focused on real user needs.
Aligning these questions with the points of view ensures that the solutions are grounded in what users actually want, making the design more human-centered and impactful.
Card Sort
I structured and conducted a rather unconventional card sort to reveal and extract users' mental models, aiming to better understand how to structure the app’s information hierarchy.
Participants were asked to anonymously sort cards into 7 different closed categories.
Standardization Grid
I used the standardization grid to identify which topics were familiar to users and which they might overlook due to limited awareness.
To understand the this data, the deeper blue colour correlates with higher number of people selecting that category, and as you can see, there were a lot of commonalities within answers. An example of 4/5 or 5/5 users answered in the same sections for some topics. Which indicates some strong correlations of user mental models.
Key Takeaways
Focus on education aspects with topics that were chosen in categories such as “I don’t know about it” or “never experienced it”
Frequently categorized topics in priority, often practiced, or affected them on the daily, can be prioritized in experience of the product.
Design
Branding
I sketched logo concepts, selected colours, and ensured accessibility by meeting AAA contrast standards. From there, I developed the final logo, favicon, and app icon, creating a cohesive and distinct brand identity.
Flows
Task Flows
I designed streamlined task flows with minimal steps to enhance efficiency and reduce friction, prioritizing an intuitive, time-saving user experience.
User Flows
I then built off my task flows to create comprehensive user flows to highlight each unique journey a user might take. Ensuring that I fully understood every possible scenario, allowing me to address diverse user needs and optimize each pathway for a smooth experience.
First Sketches
I sketched the initial screen layouts for each feature, to start visualizing the app’s structure and flow.
Low-Fidelity Mockups
I transformed my sketches into wireframes, creating low-fidelity mockups to start building out the app’s structure and basic layout.
High-Fidelity Mockups
After creating wireframes from my sketches, I sought feedback from my UX designer peers, treating them like part of my product team. Their insights were very valuable and guided many refinements, ultimately helping me develop polished high-fidelity mockups that had great design practices implemented.
Prototyping
I leveraged my custom UI component library and prototyped each task flow to align with the various user journeys identified in my user flows.
Usability Testing
Finally, I’m ready to test my prototype with users to ensure everything functions as intended. This will allow me to gather real-time feedback, identify any pain points, and make necessary improvements before the final implementation.
Focus Questions
I developed focused categories with guided questions for usability testing, targeting key areas of the user experience. This strategy enabled me to collect actionable feedback, identify pain points, and make data-driven improvements.
Account Creation:
How easily can users create an account and set up their profile for the first time?
Initial Data Entry:
How smoothly can users enter their initial period and health data during the setup process?
Error Handling:
What types of errors or issues do users encounter, and how do they resolve them?
Logging:
How straightforward is the process for users to log their period start and end dates?
Data Display:
How easily can users navigate the calendar view to see past, current, and future cycles?
Inputting Data:
How efficiently can users complete daily tasks such as logging periods, symptoms, and viewing insights?
Navigation:
How easy is it for users to navigate through different sections of the app to accomplish various tasks?
Success Indicators
I created 4 success indicators to evaluate my usability testing, ensuring that my product functioned effectively and met user needs. These metrics helped assess key tasks, ensuring the user experience was intuitive, and aligned with goals.
By organizing the insights this way, I was able to focus on the most critical areas for enhancing the user experience while ensuring the product aligned with user needs and expectations.
Usability Testing Synthesis
After conducting 5 usability tests, I synthesized the user data into 4 key categories: what worked, what didn’t, potential ideas, and user questions. This helped me identify patterns, prioritize necessary improvements.
Research Results
I used the synthesized data and success indicators to categorize insights into observations and constructive points. This helped refine the design and improve the user experience by addressing key pain points and leveraging on actionable feedback.
I made the final last changes according to my usability testing and that concluded my case study of Cycle Buddy!
