Streamlining the user experience of home diagnostics

Product redesign for optimal home user experience

Our client wanted to optimise the usability of their lateral flow antibody home test kit, including the packaging, device and accompanying mobile app. Working under tight timelines, we rapidly assembled a team of human factors and design experts to perform a usability review of the entire product. Using these insights, we helped the client re-design their product to create an optimal user experience, from the packaging to the digital companion app. The result was a low-cost diagnostic device which made onboarding simple and easy for users.

Diagnostics | Human Factors | UX/UI design | Industrial design | Packaging design

Rapid antibody test

Our client’s vision was to develop a rapid test kit that could be mailed out to enable at-home testing. The kit uses a mobile app to guide users through the testing process in a simple step-by-step manner, which includes pricking the finger, transferring a blood sample onto the test strip and scanning the result code using the mobile phone app.

The client came to Team Consulting to review and optimise the usability of their system. This included identifying where users might be confused or make errors and re-designing the device, packaging and app to meet these user needs.

Encouraging correct user behaviour through packaging design

The mobile app was a fundamental feature for the user experience, meaning a key design challenge was to ensure that a user’s first step was to download it. To achieve this, we created:

A packaging solution which guided users to the online app and encouraged correct behaviours during unboxing, including interacting with the different components of the kit in the correct order
An easy-to-follow digital experience which reduced friction for the user
An optimised device design to enable accurate blood sampling whilst tying all the elements of the system together to provide a premium brand experience

Close collaboration for rapid progress

This was a rapid development with tight timelines. Within two weeks we conducted an initial usability review and quickly developed concepts to enable initial discussions with the client’s manufacturers.

To meet our client’s tight deadlines we needed to collaborate early with their chosen manufacturing partners, to understand the constraints we were working within and to work highly collaboratively to address them.

UX/UI optimisation of the mobile app

We worked closely with the client to understand the entire system and use scenarios, in order to recommend broad user interface (UI) improvements. This included examining the mobile app to provide detailed design recommendations for its structure, navigation and on-screen wording.

Packaging and information design

We focused on optimising the packaging to encourage correct user behaviour and to improve usability. A key feature of the product was to minimise human contact: the device had to ship directly to each user’s doorstep with no signature required. This meant we needed a packaging solution which protected the product during transit, while being able to fit through a letterbox. We opted for a ‘pizza box’ style carton which provided ample space for instructional information and branding.

By incorporating a folded flap, which covered the contents while opening the pack, the user was encouraged to download the app before interacting with other parts of the system. As the key instructions were provided by the app, we also focused on making the packaging layout easy to refer to.
Tom Etheridge, Senior Industrial Design Consultant, Team Consulting

Device design to prompt user behaviour

To maximise the chance of a successful test, we ensured the device design enabled users to take the required blood sample and transfer it to the correct position on the test strip. Alongside this, we focused on finessing the look and feel of the product to meet the requirements of a premium brand experience.

Outcome

The outcome of this rapid development was a highly usable product ecosystem, designed to meet the key requirements of our client and the needs of their users.