Dados

UX Research | Product Design

Dados is a versatile data-tracking platform that utilizes custom metrics, provides correlation-based insights, and integrates with wearables and popular health and fitness apps.

Dados Final Mockups

The Inspiration

The Spreadsheet Tracker

My wife, Julia, created a spreadsheet to track her daily activities, nutritional intake, hours of sleep, medications, supplements, and mood. Her goal was to have a custom tracker that could track anything and everything she wanted in one place. Ultimately, she wanted to view the correlations between different metrics and habits over time. How was her mood the next day if she got a bad night of sleep? If she drank less water, what was her perceived effort on a run?

For Julia, having a holistic view of her data was crucial to optimizing her health and wellbeing while minimizing unnecessary effort like taking multiple supplements without knowing which ones actually made her feel better.

A unified platform for collecting, correlating, and analyzing all her personal metrics would empower her to find insights to support her goals efficiently.

The Problem

Data Disjointedness

Wearable devices and health apps provide users with an immense amount of health and lifestyle data, but this data is fragmented across multiple apps and platforms. Julia and I have experimented with various wearables and apps over the past couple of years, tracking metrics like sleep, heart rate variability (HRV), and exercise. While these devices excel at gathering data, I found several pain points:

There is a need for a unified platform that integrates data across devices, allows custom tracking of metrics, and provides insights. This would empower users to optimize their health and wellness.

Data Stock Image

My Solution

Connecting The Dots

To address the challenge of fragmented and overwhelming health data, I hypothesized that a unified platform could enable users to create a complete picture of their health and wellness.

Potential solutions:

By leveraging existing data sources and enabling custom tracking, Dados provides users with a complete picture to efficiently gain personalized insights about their well-being.

Smart Watch Stock Photo

Competitive Analysis

Market Saturation

To evaluate my hypothesis for a unified health platform, I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of the existing market, where opportunities and weaknesses may exist. That's why I conducted a SWOT analysis, evaluating leaders like WHOOP and Apple Health.

The analysis revealed a market saturated with health apps and platforms aiming to address health data tracking. However, these tools lacked seamless data sharing between sources, leading users to track data across disconnected platforms.

This competitive analysis validated the need for a unified solution where users could efficiently gain a complete picture of their health data in one place. It gave me confidence in my hypothesis and revealed opportunities for how Dados could improve upon current limitations.

User Interviews

Pinpointing Priorities

To dive deeper into my research, I connected directly with potential users who care about health tracking and analytics. I interviewed 7 people ranging from professional athletes to fitness enthusiasts who I believed would be a good fit for the target audience of Dados.

I deliberately chose users who were physically active, interested in their health and wellness, and currently tracking related data in some form. My goal was to gain direct insights into what features and capabilities these users valued most in a health platform.

The interviews revealed that integrating data from multiple devices and apps, providing customizable tracking, and having an intuitive and simple interface were the most important capabilities they wanted to see in a product like Dados.

User Personas

Athletes and Hobbyists

After completing my initial user interviews, I synthesized the insights to define two core user personas that encompassed the target users for Dados: athletes and hobbyists. Developing these personas allowed me to better empathize with and design for my core users.

Creating these user archetypes based on my interview findings allowed me to consistently reference and make decisions through the lens of who I was designing Dados for. The personas kept the core needs and mindsets of target users front and center as I translated insights into potential features and functionality.

Jeremy PersonaRachel Persona

User Flows

Outlining Operations

After developing user personas, I mapped out core user flows to shape the Dados experience. Utilizing insights from user interviews, I focused on flows that provided the most value based on research:

Developing flows centered on user needs allowed me to craft an optimal structure as I moved into design. I aimed to create intuitive flows for high-value features that would enable users to seamlessly track, analyze, and gain personalized insights from their health data.

Data Input - User Flow

Wireframes

Visual Validation

After developing my user flows, I began translating them into wireframes to establish an initial visual direction to test with users. My goal was to quickly create lo-fi wireframes to gather feedback and iterate rapidly.

This wireframing strategy enabled me to bridge user flows into a testable prototype that would validate if the structure and experience aligned with user needs and preferences.

Lo-Fi Wireframes

User Testing

Iterative Improvements

After completing my mid-fidelity prototype, I conducted an in-depth test to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of Dados. Testing my prototype provided valuable insights into desired features, functionality, language, and overall design direction.

The key takeaways from the user tests were:

Iterating based on this user feedback allowed me to refine the wireframes and ensure the end design would align closely to meeting core user needs.

Rainbow Usability Test Spreadsheet

Final Mockups

Culminating Creation

Following multiple testing rounds and iterative design improvements, I successfully developed the final mockups for the app.I addressed the primary concerns of users by:

Home Page - Before and AfterTracker Page - Before and AfterInsights Page - Before and After

Data Input Flow Walkthrough Video

Next Steps

Bringing Dados To Life

Dados started as an inspiration from my wife, Julia, who wanted to have a custom data tracker. Some day, I will bring Dados to life. The core of Dados starts with simple custom data tracking, and I plan on continuing to iterate and test to meet users' needs.

The future of Dados involves seamless integration with a wider range of wearables for enhanced usability, including devices like Whoop. I will incorporate learning language models to provide users with deeper insights and recommendations.

I would like to work alongside a developer to build out Dados as a usable tool. This will require a proper handoff of all documentation, and communicating the feature requirements to the developer.

Overall, I consider Dados to be a successful project.

Key Takeaways

Learning Through Iteration

Through the design process for Dados, I learned the immense value of an iterative approach centered around continuous user testing and feedback. In the beginning, I relied heavily on recreating features from existing apps without deeply understanding my users' needs. After initial user testing yielded dissatisfaction, I went back to my user research and developed persona-based prototypes aimed specifically at my target users' wants and preferences. Additional testing enabled me to rapidly redesign based on feedback until designs aligned well with user needs. This experience underscored the importance of early and frequent testing to create a product that truly meets user needs while balancing business requirements.

By scrapping my initial ideas and developing new prototypes specifically addressing user-articulated needs, I was able to dramatically improve user satisfaction in subsequent testing. This taught me the immense value of user-centricity through employing user research to deeply understand target users early on and continuously design to meet user needs.

Given the insights from this project, if I were to start over, I would implement more frequent and rapid testing cycles to accelerate learning. I would focus on quickly developing minimally viable prototypes to test key assumptions and ideas with target users very early on. By testing rough concepts rapidly at every stage, I could gain insights faster, pinpoint issues sooner, and redesign with user feedback top of mind. Shortening testing cycles enables designers to fail fast and learn faster. This approach of continuous testing and improvement ensures designs evolve to best meet user needs and priorities quickly and efficiently.

Other Projects

Want to get in touch?
Drop me a line!

Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.