HIV online community

welcome-page

Website design project

Role: UX & UI Researcher, Designer

Collaborators: Joshua Introne, Irem Gokce Yildirim

Duration: 6 months

Tools:

Problem and aim

Medication adherence is of critical importance for people living with HIV (PLWH) because the effectiveness of antiretroviral therapy rapidly diminishes with deviations from the treatment plan. Perceived social support has been shown to be an important factor influencing medication adherence, but can be difficult to come by because of the social and self-stigma associated with HIV/AIDS.  Our aim is to build an online social support platform to be deployed alongside an AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) portal to provide incoming patients with easy access to a trusted, private online space where social support is available.

Solution

By designing an online platform to allow PLWH to learn, share and help each other. I will encourage users to interact more deeply and effectively. The platform includes six core features:

  • Invite-only platform
  • Easy-scan forum layout
  • Easy instruction and process for experience sharing & narrative matching
  • Quick “Catch up” section for returning members
  • “Recommended” section to encourage members to interact with new contents and people rather than only with those they already know
  • Interactive instructions for newcomers

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Research methods

Secondary research

Two-week research has been conducted to get to know more about HIV/AIDS and PLWH. Mainly focus includes Social support, PLWH, Issues of obtaining social support, Advantages and issues for online social support platform.

Interview

One interview has been conducted with an HIV facilitator in East Lansing, MI. Online social support has been found necessary and the stigma issue among PLWH has been strengthened. As the participant said, “People who is newly diagnosed he/she is HIV positive always has a lot of questions. For example, who should I tell?” It is very hard to Disclosure with their families.

Focus group

Two focus groups have been conducted to talk directly with PLWH in Lansing, MI. 7 people(3 female, 4male) were in the first group and 5(1 female, 4 male) were in the second one. Each focus group lasted for 90 minutes.

Competitive analysis

A competitive analysis I conducted among 15 chronic illness forums provides a lot of interesting findings. Some low-activeness forums destroyed the social community’s sustainability, which made it harder for people to find and continue their conversations. And some outstandingly good things have been noticed. Correlations between activeness and each forum components have been calculated.
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Results

Social support is very important for PLWH. However, being exposed is one of PLWH’s biggest fears, which also becomes the biggest barrier for them to get access to social support. In addition, they are afraid of telling others also because they don’t know HIV/AIDS well. At the same time, both facilitator and PLWH agree that online HIV social support could be a great solution to reduce the fear of being exposed. Also, trust is very important and needs to be considered carefully during the HIV online community design process.

Key design ideas:

  • Members need to be notified that the community exist and is trustful as well as active
  • Some forum features like story-sharing, FAQ, Bookmark system, Confidentiality, Self-monitoring and Role system have high correlation with high activeness of forum
  • Forum structure need to be clear and easy for user to scan for their interested information
  • The platform should be designed to recommend effective contents rather than letting members only see those they are already interested
  • In order to make the forum active, interactive and social features are needed
  • Appropriate customization features, high credibility and security factor also can facilitate community interaction

Design process

Information Architecture

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Wireframes

High-fidelity prototypes

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User testing

A combination of a usability evaluation and the think aloud method has been used in this user test. Background interview, user observation and post interview have been used for better understanding of the user.

Results:

  • The flow works better for returning members rather than newcomers; more instructions are needed for new users
  • The user could not predict “new users” will be in recommended section

Outcome

User testing shows the interactive prototype works quite well for our goal. More interactive instructions have been added for newcomers to quickly get the forum’s functions. The UX research and design part has been completed and the website is ready for development. It is planned to be launched in late spring or early summer, hosted by Discourse.