Polly

Overview

In response to the challenge, "How might we design an intimate health assistant that supports contraceptive users both physically and psychologically on their daily life?" this project demonstrates a holistic UX/design thinking approach. Combining a sleek mobile interface and voice interactions with a seamlessly integrated IoT device, the outcome is Polly, a digi-physical solution for effectively managing intimate health.

My role in the project encompassed the following responsibilities:

• Defining the problem and user needs
• Conducting market research and reviewing academic studies
• Facilitating participatory design workshop
• Sketching and creating low-fidelity prototypes for both digital and physical products
• Defining User Journey
• Designing Voice UX/UI (VUX/VUI) elements (100% contribution)
• Designing GUI and high-fidelity prototyping (100% contribution)
• Directing/edting the final product video (100% contribution)

Approach

Market research & Literature review

Market research revealed that, although some physical and digital solutions exist for contraceptive pill support, they often overlook the entire user journey—especially edge cases, such as traveling or taking pills at a partner’s home. This research highlighted gaps and opportunities for improvement, inspiring our approach to think about what we can do better.

A literature review focused on identifying caring, supportive strategies that address both the physical and psychological needs of contraceptive users, forming a foundational hypothesis that guided our participatory workshops with users.

Participatory Workshop

To engage real users in the design process, we facilitated a 2-hour participatory workshop with eight women from diverse backgrounds, all experienced contraceptive pill users. After sharing personal experiences and empathizing together, we conducted a "Crazy 8" exercise, encouraging participants to brainstorm ideas that could significantly improve their journeys. Building on each other's ideas, participants provided valuable insights that became foundational for our design decisions and approach.

Defining values to bring

Building on the workshop results, we conducted further analysis to define five core values to guide our product design. The following image illustrates these five values, along with early-stage ideations inspired by participant insights from the workshop.

Storyboarding & lo-fi prototyping

The team aligned on the benefits of a physio-digital product approach to address the challenge and deliver our key values. In parallel, we created quick sketches and prototypes to test functionality, storyboarded user journey, and defined key touchpoints that would effectively embody our values and address the core challenge.

Storyboard on key user journey, main interaction with the device.

Sketches and an early prototype.

Voice interaction design

To ensure seamless, user-friendly interaction and position Polly as an approachable, intimate assistant for contraceptive users, we prioritized voice interaction as a key feature. Guided by the storyboard, I designed the voice interface by defining trigger keywords and corresponding system responses. The script was refined through internal testing and prototyped to deliver a polished, natural interaction experience.

UI Design & Hi-fi prototype

In designing the GUI, I prioritized a user-centered approach to achieve optimal usability and adhered closely to Material Design 3.0 standards, creating a high-fidelity prototype in Protopie. Prototyping the VUI was a new challenge, but I quickly mastered it, enabling the final video to showcase genuine, functional voice interactions rather than simulated scenes.