Understand

We love Apple Health features, but not the menstrual cycle tracking feature.

As a design group consisting of 7 women, one thing we have in common is that we all have similar mixed feelings toward Apple Health Menstrual Cycle Tracking feature. If this is a coincidence, we want to know what other people think of this feature. If not, then what is it that’s making us feel off?

We started with desktop research:

Findings

Here are what Apple Health users talk about most:

• “I need a full calendar view, the current one is too limiting, I can’t see my flow status for each day.”

• “There’s no place for taking customized notes.”

• “I want to add more options to cycle factors.”

• “Why can’t I turn this feature off?”

Other menstrual cycle tracking app users think:

• “Privacy is key!”

• “Calendar view is a must!”

• “I need more control for logging symptoms, for example, color coding different symptoms.”

We learned that having privacy, a full calendar view, customized notes, and a customized symptoms logging feature might be top considerations for users. Out of all these factors, the Apple Health Menstrual Cycle Tracking feature is doing well only in the privacy aspect.

To verify our assumption and learn more about user needs, we interviewed 13 women aged between 20 and 50. To our surprise:

• Only 1 out of 13 participants need customized notes

• Only 2 out of 13 participants want a customized symptom-logging feature

Having privacy and improving the calendar view matches our assumptions:

• 7 of them mentioned calendar view can be designed more engaging

• 11 of them think privacy is essential

But something new emerged from the interviews:

• 8 out of 13 participants want to have an analysis report feature to better understand their cycles and health condition. Some of them even want to know how their bodies are “performing” compared to others at the same age.

Research Synthesis

To synthesize our research findings, we used an affinity diagram to identify the most in-demand features through user pain points, needs, and behavior. We looked at the most frequently mentioned topics during research and the ones that might need major app experience improvement, then integrated them with a small degree of designer preferences.

Design Goals

We used the value/effort matrix to prioritize the most in-demand feature improvements for Apple Health Menstrual Cycle Tracking feature and land on 2 feature improvements:

We will be creating a whole-year calendar view and an analysis report features to optimize the user experience of the Apple Health Menstrual Cycle Tracking feature.

HMWs:

Before we start designing, we decided to keep privacy as an overlay need for all features and we asked ourselves these two questions:

- How might we make it quick and easy for users to check their cycle history so that they can be better prepared for the upcoming cycle?

- How might we bring more insightful analysis to help users have a deeper understanding of their cycle so that they can be more aware of their overall health condition?

Get Inspired

In order to answer these questions and keep up with the industry standard, we started with exploring 6 cycle tracking apps to understand how competitors offer calendar views and analysis reports.

We found one common theme for all the apps’ analysis report feature: They all displays Period Length, Cycle Length, and Cycle Variation.

Design Principles

We want our design to blend in with other apple health features, so we used the same fonts, color palettes, icons, and shapes from Apple Health Design System. When there’s a brand-new design without any reference, we created designs that align with Apple Health's design style as much as possible.

Brainstorm

Inspired by how competitors present their features, we used crazy-8 to brainstorm options. We found it particularly tricky to lay out the 3 functions in the analysis report: period length, cycle length, and cycle variation.

We tried blocks, line graphs, and other formats to visualize the data, and finally land on the industry standardized layout: 3 circles, because this is the best way to keep the 3 functions parallel with equal importance while differentiating themselves from the rest of the data visualization in the analysis, which is line graphs and bar charts.

Drafting Final Design

Part 1 - Calendar view page

We started with creating a user flow that incorporates the two new features into the app seamlessly. We constantly remind ourselves of the HMWs: How might we make it quick and easy for users to check their cycle history so that they can be better prepared for the upcoming cycle? Since there’s already a bar view of cycle history existing in the app, we want to add the calendar view to cycle history as an additional option for users without disrupting the bar view experience. In this way, we minimized the learning curve and made it quick and easy for users to navigate their cycle history.

We utilized the pill shape existing in the app, and integrated it with apple calendar to create a brand-new cycle calendar:

We also created a monthly view calendar that meets users’ needs of seeing their flow status and logged symptoms for the whole month.

Part 2 - Analysis report page

Here's a recap for our second HMW: How might we bring more insightful analysis to help users have a deeper understanding of their cycle so that they can be more aware of their overall health condition?

We hope users are able to dig deep into the 3 insightful analyses most frequently shown in our competitors’ apps: period length, cycle length, and cycle variation. So we not only want to show users an overview of the 3 aspects, but also a more detailed analysis of each aspect with a differentiated data visualization format.

As mentioned in the Findings section, we found some surprising user needs, such as users’ desire to know how their bodies are “performing” compared to others at the same age during a menstrual cycle. We iterated several versions of data visualization for such comparisons, but we want to keep privacy paramount for users. So instead of comparing data among users, we made a feature to compare your own cycles. In fact, this is a better solution since it’s easier to spot abnormal cycles and trends based on individuals’ unique health conditions.