I designed and built a mobile MVP to help at-risk youth.
details
connecteen
mobile
lead ux/ui designer
front-end developer
context
As part of my capstone project at UCI, my team and I designed and built a mobile app MVP (Connecteen) disguised as a wellness app to help provide out-patient resources to youth at risk of trafficking.
As the lead UX/UI designer on my team, I kept our target audience in mind (teens or younger) as well as our main goal: to keep the app discreet.
problem
Healthcare workers are limited in what they can do to help at-risk patients.
Currently, all health workers can do if they suspect a patient is a trafficking victim is hand out physical resource flyers before the patient is discharged.
Those flyers often end up in the trash to avoid detection. It's a very inefficient solution to a very big problem.
Why does this matter?
‟Over 88% of trafficking victims come into contact with the healthcare system while being trafficked." [s]
solution
Together with a children's nurse, we built the Connecteen MVP.
Connecteen is an app that connects youth with resources for shelter, mental health, relationships, food, and community after they've left the hospital.
A key part of the app is its survey feature. Users pick from five general categories, take a quick survey, and get results that fit their specific needs.
The survey went through multiple iterations to get to an experience that felt easy, friendly, and understanding.
resource list
Besides the survey, users can search directly in the resource list and filter by the 5 resource types.
In the admin view, health workers can add, edit, or delete resources in the app itself.
trade-offs
HIPAA was a serious issue we had to deal with as a team, both in our code and in the designs.
After a couple rounds of feedback and research, I ended up redesigning our initial sign up flow to remove usernames, email, and passwords. My teammates designed a way to collect resource views in the backend that admins could still export.
outcome
Despite Connecteen not going into production due to a lack of funding, it had a huge impact on our sponsor and team.
Feedback we got from the founder of Survivor2Leader:
“When you put someone in a safe place and you’re driving away, and you go ‘we got this, everything’s good’ ... I don’t have a ***** clue what to do.
I'm not speechless very often, but this is such an amazing tool for people like me.”