CommonHealth is a new Android app developed by the Commons Project, a nonprofit that builds digital platforms and services for the public good. Taking a cue from Apple’s Health Records feature, the CommonHealth app allows people to collect, store, and share their medical data—like their COVID vaccination status—from connected labs and healthcare systems safely and securely.

The app extends the health data portability model pioneered by Apple Health to the 73% of smartphone users around the world who use Android devices. Still, easily accessing the healthcare and medical information that's important to you—having it where you need it, when you need it—is not the reality for many people, even those using apps like CommonHealth and Apple Health.

For a speculative project to add a feature to an existing product, I designed a Bookmarks and Folders solution for CommonHealth to help people more easily and efficiently find, access, and organize the medical information that matters to them the most.

I interviewed six individuals who are regularly referencing or actively engaging with their medical information and asked about how their health records are currently organized.

The short answer?

I initially assumed that a major pain point is having a disorganized mix of digitized and non-digitized (paper) records, but I was surprised to learn that the typical problems are actually more fundamental than the healthcare system's unstandardized format.

I identified 4 common problems people have when it comes to their health information:

Based on my research insights, I decided to forgo personas for a Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework so that my design is centered around specific situations, motivations, and outcomes vs. a static generalization of user groups that share common traits. It’s critical that I understand what "jobs" my participants need to do, and why they might "hire" the CommonHealth app, and applying a JTBD framework would help me focus more clearly on these specific contexts.

But in order to design the best possible experiences for people, I still need to understand and empathize with them. To help me do this, I created empathy maps along with job stories for each of my participants to capture and represent their real-life attitudes, feelings, and behaviors.

Select a participant below to view their empathy map:

Going into ideation, I wanted to be sure I was designing for the complexities of someone who actually isn't the "typical" user. If I could solve medical record accessibility issues for the trickiest group of patients, I could improve the experience for all patients. (This also helps put the feature in a position where the design is scalable for more and more users over time, right from the beginning vs. running the risk of re-creating and re-designing over and over again.) 

With the more complex users in mind, I landed on my problem statement:

To ensure that I'm designing for as many "jobs" as possible, I created a persona spectrum, a method that helps explore solutions that aren’t just useful for people who are dealing with consistent, ongoing challenges (likely a small percentage of users), but also those who face the same challenges on a temporary or situational basis—which could include all of our users at some point in time.

To help users find and access their medical information quickly with CommonHealth, I wanted to avoid making users learn a whole different or new process. So I looked to the systems that people are either already utilizing or at least familiar with: Folders. I started freestyle sketching my ideas and initially called the feature "Health Journey."

Not every idea will be a winner, of course! I tried out several concepts and iterations before ending up on a bookmarking feature that includes folders to allow users to group—and share—their records however they want.

To design the Bookmark experience on CommonHealth, I looked at digital products that have a save, collect, or bookmarking feature used by millions of people—from Instagram to Airbnb to Google Chrome—for a sense of what flows and functionality work well.

I then defined how a user would use this feature within CommonHealth's ecosystem—first by sketching, then by creating user flows.

Once the flows were nailed down, I constructed the interface and visual design for the feature. In short, I kept it simple. Keeping in line with the app's clean and cheerful visual identity, I used common bookmarking design patterns as well as Material Design's interaction model so that the new feature would feel like it's always been there.

I designed a mid to hi-fi prototype in FIgma for live usability testing, which I conducted via Zoom with four participants recruited for either being an Android user, someone who is tracking their medical history, or both.

(BTW, you can see the prototype in action at the bottom of this page!)

Adding a non-bookmarked record to a folder → "Hmm, this says 'New Bookmark,' but what I'm adding isn't a bookmark yet. So I think I need to find another way to add a record here that isn't a bookmark."

For this tester, "New Bookmark" implied adding a bookmarked record only. I want users to be able to add any record to a folder, regardless of whether it's bookmarked or not. (Then, adding a non-bookmarked record to a Bookmarks Folder will automatically save the record as a bookmark.)

Additionally, two testers asked if they could add a subfolder within a folder as indicated by the floating action button (FAB) in the second screen below, which is not a current functionality. So I changed the FAB in the folder view to an extended FAB for a single action: ADD RECORD (third screen below). The change of language here also suggests that any record can be added here, not just bookmarked records.

Searching for an non-bookmarked record to add to a folder → "Tapping the bookmark icon to save the record to my folder confused me. I was second guessing whether I was saving it into the folder or just bookmarking it."

Other minor revisions I made to the feature:

→ Creating a new folder now ends on the Bookmarks home screen, visually indicating the newly created folder. It no longer ends inside the new folder itself.

→ The "Clear All Bookmarks" option on the overflow command menu is now removed. (Instead, the "clear" option can simply appear on the command menu triggered by the "Select" action.)

Through this whole project, my mind ran through an endless stream of ideas and possibilities, and it was imperative to continually ground this feature's design process in the real-life constraints of not only the current state of electronic health records, but even the constraints based in CommonHealth's vision (their users' health data is only stored on their device, never in the cloud—would xyz feature be viable for an app that is completely device-based, always and forever?).
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On the topic of health data and health information, it was also important to think about the behavioral economics principle of information aversion. Health and medical matters can be a sensitive subject, one that many people may not want to deal with unless they absolutely have to.

In asking, "How might we make tracking health journeys more sustainable?" I acknowledge that such features ideally shouldn't be asking our users to do much work at all—especially on a regular basis—that's very difficult and very ineffective. I wanted to see if a feature could just have users do a hard thing one time and be set. In other words: Can we get people to make a one-time decision now that will lock them into a future outcome?
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Some next-step ideas include automated bookmarks for incoming health records and push notifications that let people bookmark a record without even opening the app. Ask me about the rest!
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→ Interact with the final prototype