The Mosquito Prevention App
Imagine: you are an English teacher moving to Costa Rica to follow your passion.
Project Overview
You are casually warned about the mosquito diseases, but don’t take time to look them up as you are too busy packing! Wouldn’t it be nice to download an app that provides all the knowledge you need about mosquito prevention? Bored on the plane, you read through prevention techniques and products; when you land, you buy exactly what you need and are immediately updated on mosquito news in the area; you may have just saved your own life.
This app provides education on the transmission of mosquito diseases, a symptoms tracker, news updates, products for prevention, and a digital way to store important documents, providing realistic preventative measures people can take to stay healthy and fight the spread of mosquito diseases.
Create a Profile
Receive local and world news
Shop for preventative products
Track your symptoms
FAQs about mosquito diseases
Empathize
Background
In 2019, I moved to Costa Rica, joining over 250,000 other English speakers who travel abroad to teach English as a second language. I arrived during rainy season (aka mosquito season). My living quarters did not have screens, water pooled easily around the mangoes that dropped from the trees each morning, and I woke up everyday with lots of new mosquito bites. I did not know that Dengue Fever is the “most critical mosquito-borne viral disease in the world” and that 40,000 people die from Dengue each year (not to mention all the other mosquito diseases).
The Problem
Every year, over 400 million people get infected with Dengue alone and people continue to travel more than ever. Both travelers and residents in high-risk areas can benefit from access to mosquito education (without all the CDC jargon) since my research shows that residents and travelers alike feel they do not know how to prevent getting mosquito diseases.
The Goal
Inform and educate users about mosquito diseases (including vaccines available)
Provide users with resources to take preventative measures against mosquito disease (especially in high-risk locations)
Create simple ways to share information for users who get sick and need help.
Notify users when mosquito diseases are at a high in their area.
Research on residents & travelers
I wanted to understand the needs of residents vs. short-term and long-term travelers in high-risk areas for mosquito disease. To do this, I interviewed my former (adult) students who live in Costa Rica as well as friends with a passion for travel living in the U.S.
7/11
Want to know more about diseases specific to different countries
Want to know statistics on mosquito sickness: how long does it take for symptoms to show up/how many bites does it take to get sick?
8/11
Feel uninformed about mosquito diseases in other countries
Want to be notified of outbreaks in their area or even farther away
10/11
Would buy tools to help prevent disease if they knew which ones to get (one person suggested links to where she could buy them)
Would feel safer traveling with this app
Competing Apps
The apps that focus on mosquitoes/other bugs are mostly recreational, meant for identifying the insect in question. They also provide very little information about treatments available if you become infected with a mosquito disease.
I also researched apps that feature interactive maps so I can borrow UI, get inspired, and make an interactive map that is best for the user since I know country mosquito profiles will be a big feature in this app.
It would be beneficial to get government officials and/or medical professionals involved in the making of this app if it were developed. This way, all information would be validated in a couple ways AND real change could happen in spreading mosquito diseases.
How might we give people the resources and information they need to stay safe while making an app that is fun and intuitive to use?
Personas
After carefully combing through my research, 3 distinct user types began to emerge who might be interested in this product: The Resident, The ESL Teacher, and The Traveling Mom. Each person had subtle differences I thought would be useful to highight in distinct persona mindsets.
Jose’s Point of View
I went into further detail by looking at the Point of View of one of my Costa Rican students, Jose. This helped me better understand what users might look for in this product.
Define & Ideate
“Knowledge is power.”
As I began realizing the app features with my user research data, I moved into the define and ideate state with 4 main objectives:
Sitemap
Because of the vast amount of information this app provides, I used a combo of competitive analysis of various mosquito apps and websites to create an outline of the content. From there, I paired the user interviews with the research to create the information architecture you see below.
Design
How it works
The FAQs icon educates users about mosquito diseases.
The Symptoms icon provides users with a way to track symptoms.
The News icon simplifies news sources down to local and world mosquito news
The Shopping icon empowers users to buy products that will help them best prevent catching a mosquito disease.
Map (Homepage) Feature
Users filter countries by mosquito diseases most prevalent in those countries. For example, Jose contracted Dengue Fever 2 years ago and contracting Dengue a second time has a higher mortality rate. Jose is planning a vacation to Mexico. He selects “Dengue” out of the filters on the map and sees that Mexico is a high-risk country for Dengue. Now he knows he must be careful and bring mosquito repelling devices/products with him on vacation.
FAQs Feature
There were so many FAQs to include that I divided them into expandable sections. This is how it works: the user chooses which mosquito disease they’d like to read about in the top scroll bar of pills. That disease’s page loads with a clickable FAQs section at the top, symptoms of that disease, how it is transmitted, how to prevent it, how to treat it, what people who are pregnant or breastfeeding need to watch out for, who is at highest risk of getting that disease, and how it relates to COVID-19.
Symptoms Tracker Feature
The Symptoms Tracker allows users to easily log symptoms daily by giving a list of mosquito disease symptoms for the user to choose. Users can also select medicines taken that day and opt in or out of notifications after running a fever for 3 or more days (a sign of Severe Dengue that could be fatal). Users can edit, share, or TRANSLATE this logged information. From my own experience of being sick with Dengue at the hospital, my mind was not in the mood to translate anything into Spanish (even though I can speak it well). This is a feature that would have been helpful for a time like that.
News Feature
Choose Local or World News and allow access to your location
Click an article and bookmark it for later or share it
Shopping Feature
Users filter which kind of product they want to look at. Each type of product has its own facts section at the top of the page, so the user knows more about the product in general. This section could include ads after development, earning the app more money. Each product has a suggested google shopping link that helps the user browse all products in that category.
Profile
The user profile allows users to store important documents (like passports, health/travel insurance, and credit cards) and includes language preferences and notification settings about mosquito outbreaks in their area. These elements work in conjunction with the News feature, sending an alert to the user’s mobile device if rainy season (aka mosquito season) is starting in their area, if there have been recent outbreaks of mosquito diseases, etc.
The Symptoms Tracker in detail
When I contracted Dengue, I had a fever for a few days. Had it been 3, 4, 5 days? You can’t always think clearly when you’re that sick. Because Severe Dengue can be fatal after three days of a fever, I knew the Symptoms Tracker feature must be simple to log each day in order to properly diagnose a person.
Version 1: Everything in one place
Prevention, treatment, ecommerce, and health insurance information appear alongside symptoms for easy access to all information. I ended up dividing this information into different icons within the app.
Version 2: The Quiz
Here, the user answers a series of questions to give as much detail about their symptoms as possible- like a quiz with many questions and answers. There were so many questions to answer, I feared users would not end up using this feature in the end.
Version 3: The Questionaire
Users fill out a questionaire on one screen and updated symptoms are shown on a screen with mosquito cards for each day reported. The UI was lacking in this version so I turned to Google Notes to study that UI.
Version 4: Details
Here users report specific symptoms felt and medicines taken at specific times of the day. After further research, users said they would not care to report exact times of symptoms when sick. Looking back on my experience, I agreed.
The Final Symptoms Tracker
All of these versions of the Symptoms Tracker taught me I needed a way to get as much info from users in as little time as possible, forget about reporting exact times, include a medicine report, and design more intuitive UI.
Testing to understand pain points
Usability Testing
Map Feature
Users filter countries by mosquito diseases most prevalent in those countries. For example, Jose contracted Dengue Fever 2 years ago and contracting Dengue a second time has a higher mortality rate. Jose is planning a vacation to Mexico. He selects “Dengue” out of the filters on the map and sees that Mexico is a high-risk country for Dengue. Now he knows he must be careful and bring mosquito repelling devices/products with him on vacation.
FAQs
Users suggested adding categories to talk about the risks of mosquito diseases for people who are pregnant or breastfeeding and people who might be at higher risk than others.
Symptoms Tracker
To avoid having to translate a language while sick, I added the ability to translate any day logged on the Symptoms Tracker. This way, the user can hand the symptoms tracker to the doctor, instantly providing clearly translated and useful knowledge for a diagnosis.
News
Users can also bookmark a specific news article to save it for later and update news preferences.
Shopping
Instead of displaying products for sale directly through the app, the shopping feature allows users to peruse products that help with mosquito prevention and save them for later (Pinterest style). This way, even if users are in locations inaccessible to services like Amazon Prime or Walmart, they may be able to find the correct product at their convenience.
Profile
Users can opt in to receiving amber alerts for mosquito disease outbreaks in their area or areas they have recently visited.
Design System
I created interactive components to make the design process more efficient.
Final Thoughts
TAKEAWAYS
Many travelers from the U.S. may not consider mosquito disease prevention because they have not grown up being warned about it. The challenge with this app would be helping people understand it to be a vital resource when traveling.
Downloading the app
Make the map capable of showing areas for specific shopping products.
Add illustrations and videos to replace some written information for more visual effect.
Continue to update the app with new mosquito repelling products, diseases, news, etc.
Add a community feature where people local to each other can message one another.
Involve public officials and/or medical professionals in the creation of this app to optimize information given to users as well as affect change in high-risk regions of the world.
Next Steps
My biggest apprehension about this app was that it would scare users into staying home/not traveling, but 90% of my users in research said that they would feel safer traveling with an app like this and would not make them scared; rather, it would give them the knowledge and resources needed for traveling to high risk areas.
Knowledge is Power
