Norma
Norma is an app and connected IoT device to promote early detection of Breast Cancer
The Problem
1 in 8 women in the United States will develop breast cancer in her lifetime. Every year, 300,000 women develop breast cancer, and in 2018 alone, 40,000 women died. While there is no cure, early detection is key to treatment, and increases a woman's chance of surviving by 98%. Monthly self breast exams are a great way to help women become familiar with their bodies so they know if something does not feel right or if they observe a change.
Our Approach
Now we know the problem is real, but what is the best way to go about creating positive change? Would women be comfortable tracking their breast health using an app? What if it is more than an app? Would they actually use it? Why aren't more women taking preemptive measures to protect their breasts?
Lack of Resources
The app store is full of apps that you can quickly download to track everything from fitness and food, to periods and fertility. So with 200 billion dollars spent on ‘Femtech’ products per year, and $1.1 billion in venture financing since 2014, there must be some apps available to track breast health. There aren't. Not a single one. In addition to community building and education features, our app would need to have a tracking portion where users can input their self exam discoveries so that any changes could be tracked from month to month.
As UX designer, I drafted wireframes to map our user's journey through our app, then created a high fidelity wireframe which was later used in the prototype.
Once the wireframe was complete, I began filling in the details of each of our core features. We selected four core features to include in our MVP based on the largest gaps in the market, greatest barriers to entry, and feedback from target market surveys.
Education
A large contributing factor as to why women don't preform self exams is that they don't know what to look for. We knew Norma had to have a strong educational component since our number one goal was go inform women about their bodies and reduce any stigma surrounding women's health care. I created a series of illustrations to be used in an interactive app feature demonstrating how to preform a Brest Self Exam.
