Safe Drinking In The Palm Of Your Hand
Team
Jacinda Eng: Conducting user research and designing UI
Yufan Mou: Conducting user research, creating paper prototype, conducting user testing
Olivia Mirascian: Conducting user research, sketching, designing UI and digital mockup
Tina Thai: Conducting user research, sketching, and documentation
Problem Overview
Turning 21 is a monumental milestone for young adults in the United States as it marks the beginning of social drinking opportunities. For these young adults ordering their first alcoholic drink can be intimidating. It’s important to educate these young adults when they are getting started to follow safe drinking practices in order to avoid serious health consequences. According to the CDC, “excessive alcohol use is responsible for more than 95,000 deaths in the United States each year, or 261 deaths per day.” If people were more educated on the safe amount of alcohol to drink, many lives could be saved.
Our Solution
To combat the intimidation factor that these individuals may fear, our team created Drinktion, an interactive mobile application to safe drinking. Before the user heads out to drink, they will receive a personalized safety drinking checklist to follow based on their inputted preferences. While they are out drinking with family and friends, they can utilize the drink tracker feature to learn about the alcohol level in different drinks and monitor the number of drinks consumed to prevent overdrinking. Drinktion, inexperienced drinkers will feel prepared and accountable for their drinking experience.
Initial Paper Prototype
Fig. 1 Initial Paper Prototype designed for mobile
Create Profile: Setting up a profile as a first-time user
The following screens show the flow of when the user first opens the app and creates a profile as a new user. Once the profile is complete, they are presented with the homepage to choose whether they would like to access the drink tracker or safety checklist.
Task 1: Learning about safety practices through personalized safety checklist
For task 1, our focus was designing the flow of how the user would answer the questions based on their drinking environment/preferences and would then receive not only the safety checklist, but also the recommended number of drinks.
Task 2: Monitor drinks with drink tracker and distinguish between alcoholic drinks
For task 2, our focus was designing the flow of how the user would learn more about the different alcoholic drinks and add them to the tracker to monitor how many drinks were consumed that day.
Testing Process + Results
Fig. 2 Second paper prototype version used during user testing
After completing the initial prototype, we then decided to create another version of the paper prototype that was cleaner and included some more color. We then used the paper prototype shown in Fig. 2 and conducted a heuristic evaluation with another group in our class to receive feedback. Each group in the class used this worksheet to provide critiques based on Nielson’s 10 Heuristics. One of the helpful critiques include providing an option for the user to input “no” if they do not know what they are drinking beforehand in order to allow for use control and freedom. This evaluation also reminded us to better match our application with real world scenarios as our create profile page’s gender input field is not specifically asking for assigned gender at birth which is the information needed to provide a drink limit recommendation.
In addition to the heuristic evaluation, our group conducted three usability tests with young adults in their early 20s with none to moderate drinking experience. From these tests, our group received valuable feedback on the intuitiveness of the UI including that no participant realized clicking on the count on the top of the drink tracker (ex. “1 drink” as seen in the initial prototype could lead to the “total drinks” page and clarifying the “Add Drink +” button.
All the critical incidents inform us to reevaluate specific UI features details such as emphasizing certain buttons’ purpose by changing its shape and color and changing the language of questions and input fields to provide more clarity and instruction to the user.
Digital Mockup
Link to final digital mockup: https://www.figma.com/file/rgBsX1fCjKNYGtspALB6oJ/Final-Project-Copy?node-id=0%3A1
As we continuously received feedback from our paper prototypes from usability tests, we decided we needed to choose a theme for our design for the major components to create a succinct user experience. We chose blue and orange to be the primary colors for our theme and many aspects of our design stayed the same although we added some more details along the way to our digital prototypes that weren’t expressed in our final paper prototypes.
Initial Download Experience
Drinktion allows users to create new accounts or login to their already existing account in order to keep track of their data in the application. Users will enter in their basic personal information where the starred portions include information that is required. Once the user finishes setting up their account, they are presented to the home screen and can begin using the functionalities of the application.
Drink Tracker
The user is presented with this page after they decide to click on the Drink Tracker on the home page. Users have the option to search up a specific drink that they may be interested in to track or learn more about, otherwise they can also click on one of the four buttons that represent different types of alcohol to explore new alcoholic drinks.
In this example, the user decides to click on the button “Tequila”. They can then swipe left or right to explore different alcoholic beverages that contain tequila. The user decides they want to learn more about Margaritas so they click on the card to read its ingredients. The user decides to order this drink so they swipe up on the card and begin tracking an alcoholic drink.
The user presses on the “View Tracked Drinks” button and here they receive a summary of the total number of drinks they have and alcohol they have consumed, in addition to a list of all the different drinks they are tracking. They can edit the number of drinks for each tracked item, add a new drink or clear the whole list of drinks.
Safety practices for before, during and after drinking
For the user to receive their personalized safety checklist, they can input more specific information about their drinking plans. If they don’t know the specific details, they can still receive a general safety checklist.
Personalized Safety Checklist Result: General Safety Checklist Result:
Summary
Once people reach the age to legally drink alcohol, many are curious to experience what it’s like to let loose, feel tipsy and get drunk. Although drinking can be a fun, new experience to explore and experiment, over 95,000 Americans die each year due to alcohol poisoning (“Alcohol Facts & Statistics, 2021). Based on our user research, we found that 90.47% of our surveyees did not know the recommended intake of standard alcoholic drinks. Not being aware of the recommended amount of alcoholic beverages may result in undesirable consequences such as reckless behavior, driving under the influence or more severely, death. Therefore, we proposed Drinktion, an interactive mobile application for users to keep count of their alcohol to prevent them from drinking past their limit. Additionally, we included a personalized safety checklist for users to follow as a guide to prepare before drinking and periodically check-in while they are drinking. With Drinktion, we hope our users will become responsible drinkers who will help spread safe drinking practices with those around them to prevent unnecessary deaths.
Sources
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sheets/alcohol-facts-and-statistics
https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-deaths.html
