AMMA stands for Asthma Monitoring and Management Application, a companion app to Google.org’s healthcare wearable device. The aim of this app was to design a user experience that helps those who suffer with asthma feel more in control of their condition, by managing and monitoring their day-to-day symptoms.

Asthma affects more than 25 million people in the US alone, is responsible for 14.2 million physician visits each year, and 1.8 million emergency care visits. It is clear there needs to be an easier way for patients and individuals suffering from asthma to monitor their symptoms.

Create an easy and non-intrusive way of managing asthma in the form of a wearable that detects the user’s breathing patterns, other health vitals and inform the user when their attention is needed through a companion mobile app.

The goal was to design a superior user experience for Google.org’s new healthcare product line. Provide strategic and human-centered design direction to ensure the technology would serve their customer needs.

The main goal for the in-person interviews was to understand how people currently deal with asthma, what they use to control it, and to define all the problems and difficulties they have in this process. I found four participants that have various levels of asthma. After the interviews I was able to gain some insight into the daily struggles that these people were experiencing. This was crucial for me since I didn't have a great understanding of asthma. Being able to empathize with the participants was what would enable me to create a great user experience. 

A Competitive Analysis of three applications for Asthma management; AsthmaMD, Medtep Asthma and Propeller, revealed that there was unexplored potential in this market. Only Medtep Asthma offered detailed information about air pollution to the user, but none of the applications included a wearable device that could track a cardio system condition, sleep quality, and breathe indicators.

To understand the target audience better and make the design process more human-centered, I created a fictional user named Katie Seinfeld based on the information I received in the research phase. She has mild asthma that is triggered by exercise and wants to find a way to monitor it so she is able to enjoy a workout.

After making this persona, I realized that I wanted to show a second user that displayed severe asthma, and thats where John Felton came in.

John Struggles with severe Asthma and was diagnosed at the age of 22. He works outside so it is difficult for John to predict the weather, because that is what causes his Asthma to flare up the most. John has had to leave work multiple times to go to the hospital. He needs a more convenient way to monitor his symptoms and help create action plans for his health.

Create an easy and non-intrusive way of managing asthma in the form of a wearable that detects the user’s breathing patterns, other health vitals and inform the user when their attention is needed through a companion mobile app.

The main point of the general structure in the sitemap was to make the maximum amount of elements visible and accessible in one step, so the user could check their health conditions efficiently.

With these wireframes prototyped in Marvel, I conducted in-person prototype interviews and remote usability testing. Here are the results;

Success: Participants were able to easily go through the directional process of each screen. Participants thought the layout was nice for the dashboard with the action plan and weather visibility.

Fail: Participants had a hard time understanding the "What is important to you" screen. They thought this could be customized later on and not displayed in the beginning.

Improvements: Lots of spelling errors/grammatical errors were caught. On the "Tell Us about your asthma" screen, one participant thought that the questions could be worded to make users feel more comfortable (Ex: Change, How long have you had asthma, to; When were you diagnosed with asthma?). For the "What is Important to you" screen, change the word exercise to heart rate, it relates to asthma and the medical field more specifically.