Amblio
Amblio is a supporting app for parents with children who undergo lazy eye (amblyopia) treatment. The app includes a parent-friendly interface with features like progress charts, eyepatch usage statistics, and helpful resources to better educate parents about their child’s condition and what they can do to help them during treatment.
Unbundling Amblios Club
In November 2023, Amblios Club underwent a peer-reviewed evaluation in order to understand the limitations, pain-points and areas of improvement amongst the app. The consensus was to unbundle Amblios Club into two separate apps. The original apps design target was children with amblyopia between the ages of 6-12 as well as their parents, however we learnt that created one app for two types of users (parents and their children) led to the creation of a mash up of styles and structure within the app. Through unbundling, we re-structured the original app and kept the title, but made it more focussed on the uses and priorities of the children. Amblios Club now holds a suit of games, intended to encourage patching, as well as a reward wheel that is accessible when daily targets are met to further incentive them. The new and second app we worked on was titled “Amblio”, which focussed on the parents and their goals, and included information to help educate them and their child about the importance of patching, progress charts, daily tracking and statistics to help evaluate when patching is more successful with their child. As the main designer in the team, I assisted in gaining usable research and led the design state of this project, producing Digital Guidelines for Nucleolus: a document that provides detailed guidance on the application of the new brand of digital assets. This project was developed during my role as a Designer and Artist at Nucleolus.
Stage 1:Research
After the launch of a beta version of The Amblios Club the team and I begun collating data on how users experienced the app in order to see if further work could create a smoother flow and improved experience for both the parents and children using the app. Initially we sent out open- ended surveys, and liaised with ophthalmologists and orthoptists from the Southampton General Hospital Eye Unit in order to try to attain qualitative data to build from. The general consensus we received was that the app could benefit from unbundling; further user-tests hosted in Winchester at the Winchetser Science Centre allowed us to speak directly to parents of children undergoing patching which helped reinforce this belief. Due to how niche the app is, and without the opportunity to undergo competitive benchmarking, we moved towards the design stage of the project. Due to privacy concerns, the event as a whole had no visual documentation, therefore all notes were taken on the day.
Photo taken of me at the Winchester Science Centre during our user test event.
Stage 2: UI Design
With research conducted, I began work on a proposal for the brand style guidelines. Initially this work began as a google slide, outlining typeface, colour scheme, elements (e.g., calls to action, affordances, controls, forms). The work took a few iterations, alongside research into other medical apps which were our closest competitors to try to understand the conventions used in the same industry. The brand style guidelines were used alongside a document that outlined the constraints implimented on data entry fields of the app, tap target recommendations and the initial start of handover notes for the developers in our team. As Amblio was designed to be quick and simple to use, the team and I decided against the need of onboarding.
Below are a few of the slides I created for the Brand Style Guidelines.
Stage 3: Prototyping
With research and design initially completed, I began work on a medium-fidelity prototype of the app on Figma. This aimed to show all aspects of the app, allowing testers to get an understanding of the navigation of the app before we could commit to spending time and money programming it. Upon the completion of the prototype, I wrote up hand-over notes for the programmers in the team to use. As the team is small I did work alongside them as they implemented my designs. Below is a screenshot of the Figma file that I made.
UX and UI were not my sole responsibilities on this project; if you are interested in seeing my Game Design and Art portfolio regarding this project, please click here