Covid-19 App
I decided to look into a popular and unfortunate topic of the past years which is COVID-19. Actually how the Czech Republic communicates current measures and restrictions against the pandemic. I and many of my friends were constantly confused about what measures were in place, and what they could or couldn't do. I can imagine this is not just the problem of the Czech Republic but other countries as well but for the sake of this task and time, I will be focusing only on the Czech Republic.
This is not a real project. It is an example where I decided to showcase my thinking and process.
Research
Social media and news site feedback
To validate my hypotheses I've searched a lot of news portals and social media around the COVID-19 articles and threads. I found many comments of how Czech goverment badly communicates COVID-19 restrictions. People are still confused by quickly changing measures that sometimes lack any logic.
Survey
As a next step, I’ve conducted a small survey to better understand users. Questions ranged from their age, to how and where they consume information, to how well they are oriented in the current measures and restrictions. Of the 40 responses received, a large majority consisted of young people between 20–35 years.
87% of people said they collect information on the internet
42% of people don't know the current measures and restrictions
The 4 most important areas of restrictions - gastronomy, shopping, mass gatherings, and schools
36% of people answered wrong on testing questions about current restrictions
Competitive analysis
I wanted to look at government websites and portals that focused on the situation with COVID-19 and communication measures and restrictions. The main website created by the Czech government is www.covid.gov.cz. There is a list of problems I found out.
Illogical site map - for example, when I look for restaurant restrictions, the page that deals with it is under “Life situations”.
The “Current measures” pages are just legal transcription.
Not a very well-done English version of the page. A lot of texts are missing or are only in the Czech language.
User interviews
In this phase, I would normally conduct a few interviews with users to get more qualitative data. But for the sake of this exercise, I will be skipping this part and just making some assumptions.
Users think that having a mobile application would be easier than searching the information every time on the internet
Users want to have one application to inform themselves and to be able to show vaccination or negative test certificate (Like in the current application Tečka)
Users would like to be able to book a date and a place to get tested
Ideation and planning
Proposed solution
From the data, I've gathered and after some thinking, I decided to create a mobile application that will simply inform its users about the current measures and restrictions. The application should also contain information about the vaccination, tests, and news on the COVID-19 situation.
User journey
I’ve created a simple user journey map to help me understand and document the whole process. The main goal is to keep the user up to date with current measures and restrictions.
Information architecture
Here is the base IA of the mobile application. I decided to add two more features - tests and vaccination. The Czech Republic has currently an app called Tečka, which is just a digital vaccination certificate. I wanted to merge it with my app to offer everything from one app. Tests feature would be a shortcut to get tested with all past test results.
Wireframes and designs
After having all the necessary data I first outlined all screens as wireframes. Then I moved into polishing all screens into the final designs.
Validation
Usability testing
As the next step, I would prepare a prototype and run usability tests with 5-6 users. After collecting feedback I would make amends to the designs.