Case study: Designing a gender transition tracking app
By: Delphine Brunetière
Tags: Concept, Case Study, Transgender, Nonbinary, UX Design

The Research

Week 1 was focused on doing UX research.

The Lean Survey Canvas

I started by organizing my research plan and looking at what options already existed.

Doing a Lean Survey Canvas to help me build my survey was the first step. I decided I would build the survey for Transgender, Non-binary and Intersex people. I also considered that valuable input would also come from people currently questioning their gender identity.

It helped build a survey targeted at the right people I needed to hear and learn from. It also helped me scratch down the typical questions like age or gender that I decided weren’t relevant here.

In retrospect: One thing I do wish I had asked was the location or nationality, because some of the informations I wanted to provide through the app were specific to a continent, country or state.

I got 36 answers from my survey and managed to interview 5 people through a private anonymous chat.

These were very insightful and helped me understand better experiences people went through, the feeling of isolation and lack of information on steps to take, their rights, or options they often brought up.

The Brand and Feature Comparison

To get a better idea of what existed so far on the app market I did a Brand and Feature comparison chart. During my personal research, I have found two apps focused on Transgender communities:

Solace, provides information and resources to guide transgender people through whatever process of gender transition they desire. Now available, for free, on iOS & Android.

Transcapsule, an app for transgender and non-binary people to document their transitions and track the long-term effects of gender-affirming hormones.

In the survey, people said they hadn’t heard of these two apps but some were using another application called Voice Pitch Analyser.

This chart helped me understand what features existed right now. Solace seemed to be more focused on concrete steps to take during gender transitioning, legally, medically, and personally. Transcapsule is more focused on tracking the progress of transitioning by taking selfies, setting milestones, and reminders. Voice Pitch Analyser is pretty straightforward and focuses on recording voice clips and analyzing the pitch to determine if it sounds more masculine or feminine.

I noticed all of these apps had very interesting features but none of them had internal communities, so I kept that in a corner of my brain.

Affinity Diagram

When a problem is overwhelming, a good solution to organize ideas is to make an Affinity Diagram.

An Affinity Diagram is an organized output from a brainstorming session. The diagram was created in the 1960s by Kawakita Jirō, a Japanese ethnographer, and is also known as the KJ method.

The purpose of an affinity diagram is to generate, organize, and consolidate information concerning a product, process, complex issue, or problem.

Constructing an Affinity Diagram is a creative process that expresses ideas without quantifying them.

This diagram helped me organize big themes such as Stats & Tracking, Educational content, Community, Personal path, Spiritual or Mental health, Physical & Body care, and Gender identities.

User persona

To apply all of the information I gathered through my research, I made a User Persona.

I created Kiera, an American transgender, and non-binary Young-Adult Fiction Author. They like to be up to date with Trans Rights and news related to the community, feeling empowered is important to them and they wish to empower younger generations as well.

User journey

With the persona defined, I built the User Journey. Kiera wants to track their transition after 15months of Hormone Therapy and shares pictures on social media platforms.

The process goes through many steps as Kiera needs to take the picture, get an app to edit two pictures side-by-side, select an older picture, and post it on social media. The design opportunities come up when they get nasty comments that make them feel bad about their body. But it feels like it’s all worth the hassle when they get occasional thankful DMs from people questioning their gender identity or starting their own transition.

Problem Statement

A problem statement is a clear concise description of the issue(s) that need(s) to be addressed on a project. It is used to center and focus at the beginning, keep on track during the effort, and can be used to validate that the effort delivered an outcome that solves the said problem(s).

My problem statement is as follows:

Transgender people, non-binary people, and people in questioning about their gender identity want to learn about legal and medical steps to take, and post content related to gender identity on a platform where their interrogations, frustrations but also victories and successes will be well-received and understood. They need to navigate the world from a place of knowledge, feel empowered by being true to themselves, as well as share, learn, grow and feel like they are a part of a community they belong to.

Hypothesis Statement

The hypothesis statement enables us to understand the implication of the question and the different variables involved in the project. It helps to make precise predictions for the launch of the project.

Here, I wrote a hypothesis statement based on the idea that this app would be developed and published. It is as follows:

We believe that by creating a platform for transgenders, non-binaries, and people in questioning about their gender identity, we will give them the tools to build more empowerment and engagement within the community but also, hopefully, the general mindset. We will know we are right when our product achieves a Retention Rate of 28% after 90 days of release and a DAU(Daily Active User*)/MAU(Monthly Active User) ratio of 50%.

*Are considered “active users” the ones who update the personal log/journal, update a goal, and/or upload and share content onto the platform

Mindmap

Again, I needed to organize my thoughts and decided to start a Mindmap. Similar to the Affinity Diagram, the Mindmap visually organizes information. But here, major ideas are connected directly to the central concept, and other ideas branch out from those major ideas.