MED

RESEARCHER, UX DESIGNER, UI DESIGNER

MED APP

"Achieving healthier lifestyles by exercising together".

The challenge started from a case study about Harvard University´s walk-in clinic with a team consisting of three industrial and service designers to come up with a new approach to dealing with health in college.

I took responsibility for the research process and transforming the insights into the prototype we suggested. The first steps were those about understanding our college users and with them later ideate and design our solution.

How it all started

Starting from a case study about Harvard University’s walk in clinic, the team was tasked with developing a project based on taking a different approach than what Harvard had done towards health.

We started by talking directly with other college students, both in academic buildings as well as in more sportive places like the gym or parks. We focused our initial understanding of the matter on three key points.

Our initial goals were to understand

What health means

for students.

What do students do in order to stay healthy.

How comfortable are students changing to achieve healthier lifestyles.

This is how we achieved it

Physical activity

groups

The research suggested that the students could be divided into 4 different categories depending on the amount of physical activity they engage in.

The team clustered those categories into 2 different personas. This decision came out from understanding that basically there was a group that engaged in routinely exercising and a second one that did not.

The students

Hi! I am Nicolas

Nicolas is passionate about living a fit and healthy life. He does exercise on a daily basis as it helps him to deal with stress caused by college.

He loves to motivate others into becoming their better selves as exercise and a healthy diet did for him time ago when his big brother encouraged him to start exercising.

Hey, my name is David

David is a shy freshman wanting to do friends. He has started to feel that college life is taking a toll on his health.

He would love to start exercising to keep the “freshman 15” away but also so he can get fit, his dilemma is that he doesn’t know where to start but would love to given he could be guided and accompanied by someone else.

"A solution should bring

students closer, not distance them".

After the research, the team decided that a solution should be bringing students together, regardless of their physical condition instead of dividing them.

To achieve that, we considered what made them different but also what could they share and how to bring them closer.

So we started visualizing a platform where the participation of both, physically active and inactive students, would make it work and both would get the chance of accomplishing their goals with the help of others.

What makes MED unique?

Its for students, by students.

The team thought of a solution in which all students could participate regardless of their physical condition. One in which everyone had a role but most importantly support and flexibility.

For this solution we used the 2 personas groups we previously constructed and assigned each a role.

Meet the Mentors and the Mentees.

Hi! I am Nicolas

The Mentor

Mentors have developed lifestyles where physical activity is key and now they want to share it with others. Their role is to offer physical activity "classes" whenever and however they want, guiding and

encouraging others into a more

active life.

Hey, my name is David

The Mentee

Mentees are users that for different number of reasons, from wanting to lose weight, become fit, get tknow more people or just for fun are willing to engage and let themselves be guided by others to achieve their goals

and help others achiever

theirs.

How does MED work?

This model was made to help illustrate how MED would happen for both Mentors and Mentees. It shows the flows they both would follow as they experience MED either as Mentors or Mentees and how if one wanted to become the other could happen.