UX Case Study:
Happy Saplings Health Management
Case Study Overview
The Product
Happy Saplings is a streamlined health management app that enables parents to review their children’s health records, print the records to meet school or camp requirements, and see when their children’s healthcare visits are due.
The initial parameters and design goals of this family health management app were prompted by a UX Design course offered through the Google Career Certificate program.
Project Duration
December 2024-May 2025
Product Outcome:
This case study resulted in a low-fidelity prototype created in Figma seen in action below.
The Problem
Parents of children and teens have limited time, energy, focus, and financial resources to devote to managing the intricacies and obstacles surrounding the preparation and tracking of children’s health records to appropriately meet their children’s school or camp requirements with ease and effectiveness.
The Goal
The family health management app Happy Saplings will let users coordinate health visits and records or documentation to match school/camp requirements and provide streamlined avenues to make submissions to or contact with relevant organizations. This function will affect parents of children and teens by making different steps of coordinating care and fulfilling school/camp requirements more accessible and less stressful to complete when they are on the go, as well as giving them peace of mind and a sense of security by having all the children’s information in one place.
We will measure effectiveness by analyzing the number of health records viewed and printed as well as the number of health visits viewed and confirmed within the app.
Role & Responsibilities
UX Researcher/Designer
My role within the UX Case Study for Happy Saplings: A Health Management App is that of a researcher, designer, and most importantly student. As a learning experience rooted in real-world needs and working with hypothetical interview information, this project is a practical application of design theory and fundamentals. My responsibilities included everything feasibly needed to move the project from the initial phases of empathizing with users and researching their needs and pain points to creating personas, defining the problem, and outlining the unique value propositions of the Happy Saplings App.
Case Study Snapshot:
Understanding the User
User research is a key aspect of how designers create empathy for their users and their experience as they use a product that addresses their needs and wants. The user research for the Happy Saplings project sought to reach a wide range of potential users and address potential design biases early in the process.
Information from Users
The user research for this project involved conducting short interviews (provided by Google) and collecting biographical information from a varied population of different backgrounds and family compositions. This diversity of perspective was important to consider while examining the limitations and differences of any potential user.
Assumptions
Prior to conducting research, the design team’s assumptions about user needs centered around the need to lessen stress and provide help with organizing responsibilities for parents on the go. On the surface, it seemed that tracking health/medical information and compiling information from different organizations in a way that meets a variety of requirements and timelines was a stressful process that was difficult to track well.
These general assumptions did indeed hold to be true from the interviews—however, there was additional interest around saving time and money in all aspects of childcare that wasn’t thought about specifically beforehand. It was important to include the idea of limited resources while dealing with health document requirements for schools/camps within the design parameters for this project.
Initial Takeaways
Overall, the early takeaways from the user research around parents who needed to manage healthcare information for their children as they enabled access to schools/camps were the following:
Parents have limited time, energy, and financial resources—which puts a strain on their personal and family lives.
The amount of disparate information, requirements, and processes involved with child healthcare and school/camp requirements can be overwhelming to manage.
Tracking timelines, due dates, and healthcare visits is a resource-intensive process.
User Research: Pain Points
The design goals should be centered around addressing user pain points in order to achieve a useful, engaging product that serves the user. Throughout this phase of the design process, four key pain points were outlined as priorities:
User overwhelm and stress
Summary: It is easy for people to feel overwhelmed by the demands on their time and are looking for ways to manage that stress.
Design goal: Clearly lay out needs and priorities to help users understand what needs to happen when.
User frustration and time considerations
Summary: Some users are frustrated by hard-to-use tools or tasks that take longer than they’d like, considering everything else they have going on.
Design goal: Make an easy-to-use system that is simple to access and navigate to minimize time spent accomplishing tasks.
User confusion and obstacles to their success
Summary: Some users are confused by systems, communication processes, or the speed at which information is given in different environments, which can cause stress and anxiety.
Design goal: Allow users to personalize how they access healthcare information to match their needs/preferences and have the app provide helpful prompts or reminders.
User limitations and management of resources
Summary: A shared pain point for many users is the challenge of managing time, health, and money, and feeling like it is difficult to do so in their lives.
Design goal: Options for how to manage time commitments, duration of attention, and effective costs when dealing with healthcare management.
Persona
The persona guides design considerations as the design team considerations specific and representative use cases. The problem statement and persona below came from a key persona in this case study.
Problem Statement:
Deanna is an active, working single mother who needs a quick, intuitive, and easy-to-use way to manage her child’s health records and doctor visits to help meet school/camp requirements. This is important to her because it’s confusing and stressful to handle so many administrative tasks from different organizations in the midst of her already busy schedule and existing day-to-day activities.
Persona (Deanna):
User Journey Maps
Deanna’s user journey revolves around accessing, compiling, and submitting information regarding her teenager’s health records and school/camp requirements. While each step of the various goals she has to accomplish is simple, there are actually a large number of decision points and obstacles to accomplishing things like accessing health records and ensuring health visits are planned in a way that fills school/camp requirements.
Because of the multiple points of entry and potential points of failure, Deanna’s hypothetical thought processes around her child’s health record management range from hope and excitement to confusion and anxiety.
The biggest pain points for Deanna as a main persona for whom to design ultimately highlight too many options, too much ambiguity around how to succeed, and stress around failure for something that matters to her family.
Goals & Considerations
With the initial phases of user research completed and having intentionally taken steps to understand the user, I proceeded to elaborate on the goals, considerations, and parameters that will define the final design of the Happy Saplings health management app. In particular, I focused on a variety of hypothesis statements to further the problem statement tied to Deanna’s persona—and continued to develop unique value propositions that will set this product apart for potential users.
Hypothesis Statements
Hypothesis Statement #1:
If Deanna downloads an app that collects and displays health requirements in a quick and easy way, then she can help make sure her daughter’s health records are in order for upcoming school/camp activities.
Hypothesis Statement #2:
Deanna needs an app that can organize, categorize, filter, and display both health requirements and associated dates for health visits so that her daughter will have the necessary health records to allow her to participate in school/camp activities.
Hypothesis Statement #3:
If Deanna can schedule or input health visit dates easily and compare them against health requirements for school/camp activities that her daughter participates in on a mobile app, then she can help make sure her daughter is set up for success while continuing to focus on her job and various hobbies and interests.
Value Propositions
The following are this product’s unique value propositions that address users’ needs:
Family and child profiles that are easy to update and access
Friendly, conversational prompts and reminders with accessibility options
Centralized place to save and access all health information
Shortcuts, links, and saved information to various organizations
One-click options to print, access, and export health information for each child
Auto-fill options for schools/camps and health organizations’ information from a searchable database
Customizable and auto-updating calendar or alternative view of health visit dates and submission deadlines
Auto-generated templates of email or phone scripts to use when contacting or submitting to various organizations
Integrated email support to allow sending emails with attachments directly from within the app
Multiple ways to export, view, and/or print information for each profile
Easy-to-read and customizable icons, buttons, and visual language
Starting the Design
Moving forward with ideation and design brings us to brainstorming exercises, information architecture, wireframing, and prototyping. This stage includes aspects of standard design practice, including the following:
Sitemap and User Flow
Paper Wireframes
Digital Wireframes
Low-Fidelity Prototype
Sitemap & User Flow
Starting the design began in earnest with ideation, storyboarding, and creation of user flows that could lead to the first iterations of information architecture for the Happy Saplings app. I further refined the logic and flow behind the product using multiple iterations of both the Happy Sapling app’s sitemap and wireframe models of key screens and pages.
The sitemap at this stage of the design process informed the wireframes and vice versa, ultimately leading to this visual representation of the product’s information architecture.
An example user flow that helped guide the construction of this sitemap is below.
Paper Wireframes
The homepage is the starting point within the app. Users need a welcoming and encouraging place to dive into family health management throughout their busy days.
By implementing paper wireframes at first, I could highlight and iterate upon key features (starred in the image).
I created the first version of the homepage screen using key aspects from the five draft sketches seen below.
To create the second version of the homepage screen, I reviewed all of the wireframes created across the app during the initial ideation (14 total screens).
I created two additional iterations before settling on a second version of the homepage. This version combined key elements developed through the ideation process that highlighted:
important information,
ease of use, and
intuitive navigation.
This same process led to the final paper wireframe for the My Family page of the app.
As a preview of the next section on digital wireframes, the iterations of the My Family page with its paper wireframe and the digital wireframe developed from it are shown below.
Digital Wireframes
As I moved through the design process, the digital wireframes incorporated key elements and priorities taken from feedback and findings from the user research.
Wireframe #1:
Users wanted an effective way to navigate a complicated system without being overwhelmed. So, a clean, welcoming, and intuitive design was a priority alongside avenues to communicate important data and information.
Wireframe #2:
Headers, toolbars, and buttons were all important elements to use as a way to make navigation simple to do without getting lost.
Providing white space, visuals, and clearly separated sections was another key consideration for minimizing stress while helping parents be productive on the go.
Wireframe #3:
Since each family is unique, the app needed to allow space for the personalization, customization, detail, and focus users may want or need to apply to their family as a whole as well as for each individual child.
Wireframe #4:
Because the user’s information and documents are so important and personal to them, each user needs to feel like they are set up for success to accomplish their tasks with ease and confidence.
Wireframe #5:
As parents start finalizing documents and interacting more directly with the school/camp/health systems, it is important to keep the experience as simple and easy to use as possible, while giving them all the tools and options they may need to accomplish their goals.
Wireframe #6:
Users will appreciate a sense of accomplishment, reassurance, and guidance for how to proceed as they move through each step of the process around health records and visits as well.
Low-Fidelity Prototypes
The low-fidelity prototype for the Happy Saplings application is available to view in Figma:
https://www.figma.com/design/Oc38o9NaRPEDAtOmaWAzn2/Lo-Fi-Prototype?node-id=0-1&t=hLTvhpMHUXaxoq6o-1
Lo-Fi Prototype
The prototype overview below highlights all of the actions a user takes when they want to view and export their child’s health records.
The close-up screenshots further illustrate the user journey, starting at the Home Screen. The prototype enables users to click through to the My Family page and onto a child’s Profile so that they can view and export a selection of health records through the child’s Health Records page.
Lo-Fi Prototype in Action
The lo-fi prototype demonstrates full navigation functionality through the entire user journey, with several methods to move both forward and backward and interact with key decision points, such as choosing to view the final file output or not.
Figure: Full Low-Fidelity Prototype – user flow in action
Next Steps
With the low-fidelity prototype in place, testing and iteration become the focus. The complete end-to-end design framework incorporates robust user research at this point in the process to test the initial designs. From here, the next steps then include usability studies and refining the design to bring everything closer to a polished and finished product.
Usability Studies
To truly be able to iterate, design requires user testing, and here is where usability will come into play through reaching an online user base to test and evaluate the current, testable prototypes. Gathering data on these user interactions and feedback will allow further polishing and innovation as the design moves closer to meeting user needs as closely as possible with a unique product.
Refining the Design
The polish and refinement of the product design will take the Happy Saplings app toward a final product that can be realistically released to a successful public reception. It will involve the following key aspects of design iteration:
Mock-ups
High-Fidelity Prototype
Accessibility Considerations
Takeaways
As a course-based project and case study, the Happy Saplings family healthcare management app has continued to challenge and delight me as a creative professional exploring the foundations and guiding principles of UX design.
From operating within an established framework to applying principles within a realistic scenario, I have been able to focus on the early stages of designing a successful product and then leveraged those learnings in Figma to develop early wireframes and prototypes. The early phases around understanding the user and their pain points and needs made all the difference when moving into drafting design solutions.
I am pleased with taking the time to dive into the foundations of the design framework with the Happy Saplings health management app and gaining proficiency that I can apply to future work and projects. Beyond the existing design work, I look forward to working further on the usability testing and high-fidelity prototypes that will continue to bring this idea closer to a fully realized product.