TARGET AUDIENCE
Sutter patients in higher education preparing for job interviews.
RESEARCH
QUESTION
What type of speech therapy experience benefit stutter patients?
What is the biggest challenge stutter patients face?
Prior to designing the speech therapy experience for stutter patients, I first conducted a series of user research and needs analysis to better understand my audience.
MY RESEARCH PROCESS
Step 1
SUBJECT
INTERVIEW
To start, I conducted a series of interviews with real patients who stutter (from the National Stuttering Association, New York Chapter). The main purpose of this interview was to understand the challenges these people face and construct an authentic needs analysis from my target audience.
Step 2
SPEECH
PATHOLOGIST
INTERVIEW
(focus group)
In addition to interviewing actual patients (target audience of product), I met various speech pathologist to collect insightful data from their perspective. The purpose of this interview was mainly used for the instructional design of the overall experience.
Step 3
COMPETITIVE
ANALYSIS
In attempt to get a better understanding of the current market and existing products, I conducted a competitive analysis of products that provide therapeutic experiences.
Step 4
PERSONAS
I created personas to get a better understanding of my potential users. This helped me to think about the instructional design of the overall experience from various perspectives.
Step 5
JOURNEY
MAPPING
A series of user journey maps were created in attempt to draft different possibilities. It focused on describing the relationship between my future product (idea) and customers. It was a visualization all of a user's interactions from their point of view.
Step 6
USER TEST & INTERVIEW
Weekly user tests were conducted to test all types of prototypes (rough, mvp, etc.). The earlier prototypes were designed as mock ups of ideas that were brainstormed, and therefore was tested with people regardless of whether or not they stutter. In later prototype testing sessions, only patients who stuttered were included in the tests, and these sessions were 30-40 min long.
This user research was conducted as part of a prototyping fellowship by Verizon in 2018.
Despite its progress, my team is currently putting this project on hold, as we look for science research partners to advance our product forward.