Designing a Tele-therapy App for Low Literate Users-A UX Case Study
Amaan is a bilingual tele-therapy app designed to help individuals who may not have a formal education and may struggle with reading. This app serves as an accessible way for them to connect with therapists and share their thoughts and feelings through phone calls.
Additionally, it is user-friendly for those who are not familiar with the full range of smartphone capabilities and primarily use their device for calls and WhatsApp messaging.
Duration: 4 months
Tool: Adobe XD, Zoom, Miro, Figma, Balsamiq
Challenge
How to design an interface that promotes therapeutic safety for low-literate users in Pakistan?
Design Process
Literature Review:
In empathise stage, we studied different papers presented in the CHI Conference and tried to learn from other people’s work to gather requirements for our interface. We found some major themes in our study which are as follows:
1. Covid-19 and Shifting trend: Covid-19 has made a huge disruption in everyday activities. Offices forced to shut down, complete lockdown has been placed in major cities and physical contact is limited. When Work from home is prevalent in these testing time. Then there is a need to have therapy sessions online. Study shows online therapy demands for some extra protocols like:
- Stable Internet Connection
- Private room without any disturbance
- Proper Lightening
- Note taking should not be intrusive
- Eye contact between therapist and patient should be maintained
However, online therapy has its own limitation and can not be given to people with severe anxiety and depression or people with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or suicidal cases.
2. Tele-therapy in Global South Asia It has been noticed that considerate amount of workload has been done in Western countries to promote teletherapy. But in case of South Asia and specially low literate user, this work becomes irrelevant as the work done is for the user in developed countries and cannot be translate for developing countries context.
The low literate users in developing countries learn from practical experiences and cultural symbols than from books, articles and other formal avenues of learning.
Competitor Analysis:
We have studied 10 competitor apps (both local and international) and tried to translate their features in local low literate population in three different categories; telemedicine, teletherapy, practice management system.
User Interviews:
Due to lockdown, we couldn’t interview low literate users directly. We interviewed therapists who work with this population to understand their needs.
Design
We began by sketching out various ideas on paper and then created wireframes for the most promising concepts using an online wireframing tool called Balsamiq. Below are the wireframes for the “Book a slot with a therapist” feature:
In later stages, We converted those wireframes to hi-fidelity mockups in Adobe XD.
Features
Here are some notable feature which we have specifically designed for low-literate users.
Easy Sign Up & Login
As our user group is not literate and technically well-equipped, so we keep registration and login easy. The user just has to enter their phone number and confirmed it with OTP to log in.
Privacy Compliant
In South Asia, smartphones are being shared in the family. Specially smartphones of females, hence, limiting the privacy of the users. Keeping this in mind, we have introduced built-in app lock feature.
Educating Users with Onboarding Due to the novice user group, we designed a short onboarding conveying message visually (through illustrations), linguistically (both in Urdu and English), and in audio also.
Bi-lingual & Inclusive Interface
Inclusivity is not luxury but a necessity and extra capability of an interface to accommodate people with different abilities and skills.
Keeping that in mind, we did not limit our interface to low literate, but also designed it in English to cater to literate users.
Audio Help for low literate Users
We incorporated an audio-help button in major screens which guide users about the functionality of a particular screen or button in the local language.
Super Simple Process
We tried our best to keep the flow intuitive and easy to understand, especially book appointment with the therapist flow.
Urdu Interface
English Interface
Usability Testing & Takeaways
To validate our design we conducted a think-aloud usability test of our prototype with ten participants of which the highest education level was eight grade.
We conducted usability testing to evaluate three key tasks:
- Signing up for an account on the app
- Booking a meeting with a therapist
- Rescheduling a meeting with the same therapist for future sessions.
The testing allowed us to identify any issues or obstacles that users may encounter while completing these tasks, and we used the feedback to improve the overall usability and user experience of the app in next phases of the project.
1. Signing up for an account on the app
Most users were able to complete this task without any hassle except for one who asked the facilitator:
“Yeh OTP kya hota hai? (What’s an OTP)?”- User A
Through our testing, we discovered that using technical jargon or unfamiliar terms can be confusing for low-literate and non-tech savvy users. For example, using the term “code” instead of “OTP” might have prevented the issue that arose during testing.
2. Booking a meeting with a therapist
Almost all the users were able to book a meeting with their therapist.
This validates our hypothesis that:
In the South Asian context, users tend to prefer upfront information rather than a deep interface flow. Unlike in the West, where minimalism is often valued in art and design, South Asian design is characterised by the inclusion of fine details and a lot of information in a compact space. But since we were designing for low-literate users so we avoid depth in the flow and kept minimal design element on each screen.
3. Rescheduling a meeting with the same therapist
Mostly users failed this task because they were not able to figure out the icon we designed for rescheduling a meeting. This may be due to the icon being too subtle or not clearly communicating its purpose.
In order to ensure that your symbols and icons are easily understood by the largest possible audience, it is important to choose ones that are culturally and traditionally recognisable by your user group.
Thank You!
This is my first medium article. I studied computer science from Lahore University of Management Science (LUMS), focusing on designing technology for development, inclusivity, and accessibility. I did this project as a part of my coursework. I hope you liked it.
