They are wired headphones, but the stereo mini-plug cable is detachable. Something else I noticed right of the bat was the very nice carrying case that comes with them. It has a hard plastic exterior with a soft cloth interior that helps to protect the surface of the headphones from scratches. I never truly appreciated cases for headphones until I started carrying them from place-to-place. Now I can’t imagine not having a case. Once I gave the headphones a thorough once-over exam, I tried them on. As I mentioned, they have a classic over-the-ear style and just looking at them, the padding on the ear pieces seem adequate and the peak of the headband seemed to be a bit lacking, but you don’t really know comfort unless you try on the product. So, I slipped the headphones on and found them to be exquisitely comfortable.

If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.
Oprah Winfrey

Now that I had the headphones on my head, I was finally ready to plug and play some music. I plugged the provided cable into the jack on the headphones and then the one on my iPhone. Then I called up Pandora. I tend to have a very eclectic music purview and have many stations set up for different moods. the sound quality of these headphones was remarkable. There is an amazing depth of sound and incredible highs and lows that make listening to music a truly breathtaking experience. In order to test how voices sounded, and the overall art of mixing, I pulled up Netflix on my iPad Air and watched a few minutes of a movie to hear all the nuances of the film.

None of them were lost. In fact, I ended up hearing sounds that I hadn’t heard before. Echoes…birds chirping…wind blowing through trees…breathing of the characters…it was very impressive what the headphones ended up bringing out for me.

Witnessing calm and quiet atmosphere, clear and fresh air seemed like a miracle to me. I wanted this time to last longer since I was not sure if I would be able to witness it again, knowing my habit of succumbing to schedule. There was this unusual serenity that comforted my mind. It dawned on me, how distant I had been from nature. Standing near the compound’s gate, feeling the moistness that the air carried, I thought about my life so far.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.
Steve Jobs

I was good at academics, so decisions of my life had been pretty simple and straight. Being pretty confident I would make it to the best junior college of my town in the first round itself, never made me consider any other option. I loved psychology since childhood, but engineering was the safest option. Being born in a middle class family, thinking of risking your career to make it to medical field was not sane. I grew up hearing ‘Only doctor’s children can afford that field’ and finally ended up believing it. No one around me believed in taking risks. Everyone worshiped security. I grew up doing the same.

‘Being in the top will only grant you a good life’ has been the mantra of my life. But at times, I wish I was an average student. I wish decisions would have not been so straightforward. Maybe I would have played cricket- the only thing I feel passionate about. Or maybe I would have studied literature (literature drives me crazy). Isn’t that disappointing- me wishing to be bad at academics. It’s like at times I hate myself for the stuff I am good at.

When you step out of these four walls on a peaceful morning, you realize how much nature has to offer to you. Its boundless. Your thoughts, worries, deadlines won’t resonate here. Everything will flow away along with the wind. And you will realize every answer you had been looking for, was always known to you. It would mean a lot to me if you recommend this article and help me improve.

Turo’s booking process has many similarities to other marketplaces in the sharing economy. One example includes asking guests to write a message to their host when booking a car.

If you’ve ever booked on a marketplace (car, home, or service) and were prompted to write a message before checking out, you’ve likely asked yourself: “What should I say?”

Guest conversion team

I was the product designer on this initiative alongside a PM, five engineers, and a data scientist. We shipped our solution available on the web, Android, and iOS in 6 weeks.

As a part of the conversion team, we were responsible for helping guests book a trip as quickly and painlessly as possible. We had 3 basic tenets:

1. Reduce friction
2. Increase motivation
3. Decrease stress

Identifying issues at checkout

A small number of guests complete the booking funnel

Through our research, we learned that only 20% of guests convert at the checkout page.

Checkout has a lot of friction

Guests have a lot to consider when selecting a car for their trip (price, car type, location, etc). Once they find the perfect car, they’ll start the checkout process:

A project with high impact and low effort

After careful consideration, we decided to focus on reducing friction in the message to the host. Our team felt strongly that this initiative could result in high business impact with the lower effort of our resources.

Coming up with different concepts

Providing instructions to a required message

The first concept is still required for a guest. Instructions and suggestions will be provided to make it easier when guests write the first message to the host.

Making messages optional

This concept focuses around letting the guest either write a message before or after checking out.

If they know what they want to say before, then they can write a message at checkout. If not, guests will be led to the messages to start a conversation with hosts.

Removing message from checkout

The last concept completely removes the message from checkout. The guest lands on messages after the confirmation screen.

The guest and host are provided suggestions to start the conversation.

We ultimately chose the last concept because:

• Reduces the overall number of steps at checkout
• More simple design and logic
• We’ll learn more through an A/B test

Additional key features

It only applies to instant bookings

The booking process has a pending request and instant book feature. hosts who can be less confident about screening guests will use the Pending requests feature.

Knowing this, I wanted to preserve the functionality for pending requests. Hosts who use instant book are more business-minded and generally, more flexible with their bookings.

Provide value for hosts

I was concerned about a few features that were released earlier in the year that benefitted guests but made it more difficult for hosts. I proposed to make it easier for hosts to find information about guest details.

So we switched gears and asked ourselves – how could we make it easier for guests to book a car AND help hosts with the information they need to feel comfortable renting their car to the guest?

Improving navigation as extra credit

Lastly, I was worried guests might get confused when they land in a different place after booking – instead of Trip Details.

I recalled a previous study, which highlighted the difficulty guests had with navigation. I proposed a change with my team and we agreed to improve the usability of the navigation – to ensure guests can easily way find a booked trip.

Bridging communication between
guests and hosts

Guest booking process

The first change we made to checkout was removing the Message to host section. We replaced it with the message that explains they can message a host after checkout, which can alleviate any concerns about contacting the host.

The guest is provided clear context that they can message the host after the confirmation screen. Once a guest lands on the message screen, they will be greeted with a message guiding them with instructions to message the host.

Ensuring clear navigation and content

I pushed for clear labeling over icons in our navigation. I separated the information hierarchy by grouping trip information from the navigation and avoiding an image as a background for better readability. 

Give hosts more confidence

I provided upfront information about the guest to help the host understand who is booking their car.

An empty state message was also provided to help guide hosts on what to write. This Turo message will disappear once a message is sent from either party.

Impacting our metrics

Additionally, we saw hosts had a slight increase in their engagement with guests. Some of our secondary metrics resulted in:

• ~95.2% of trips had conversations started between guests and hosts
• ~73% of messages have guests starting the conversation

It was exciting to see my work having a positive impact on the business, from both sides of conversion and net cancelation.

Witnessing calm and quiet atmosphere, clear and fresh air seemed like a miracle to me. I wanted this time to last longer since I was not sure if I would be able to witness it again, knowing my habit of succumbing to schedule. There was this unusual serenity that comforted my mind. It dawned on me, how distant I had been from nature. Standing near the compound’s gate, feeling the moistness that the air carried, I thought about my life so far.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.
Steve Jobs

I was good at academics, so decisions of my life had been pretty simple and straight. Being pretty confident I would make it to the best junior college of my town in the first round itself, never made me consider any other option. I loved psychology since childhood, but engineering was the safest option. Being born in a middle class family, thinking of risking your career to make it to medical field was not sane. I grew up hearing ‘Only doctor’s children can afford that field’ and finally ended up believing it. No one around me believed in taking risks. Everyone worshiped security. I grew up doing the same.

‘Being in the top will only grant you a good life’ has been the mantra of my life. But at times, I wish I was an average student. I wish decisions would have not been so straightforward. Maybe I would have played cricket- the only thing I feel passionate about. Or maybe I would have studied literature (literature drives me crazy). Isn’t that disappointing- me wishing to be bad at academics. It’s like at times I hate myself for the stuff I am good at.

When you step out of these four walls on a peaceful morning, you realize how much nature has to offer to you. Its boundless. Your thoughts, worries, deadlines won’t resonate here. Everything will flow away along with the wind. And you will realize every answer you had been looking for, was always known to you. It would mean a lot to me if you recommend this article and help me improve.

I redesigned an automated insulin program for Type-II diabetes patients – so the patients can safely use the correct insulin dose.

Mobile Insulin Dosing System (MIDS) is a 3-month treatment plan, which checks on a patient every few days to see if they need an adjustment on their insulin dose.

MIDS wasn’t ready to be commercialized

When I started on this product, it was commercially preparing for a public launch. Before that could happen, we needed FDA clearance from our pilot studies. The designs failed – showing patients were having problems understanding what the therapy does and how it works.

We needed to quickly improve the current product to help patients self-manage throughout their treatment plan. 

Patients didn’t understand the treatment program

We sought to improve the experience of MIDS onboarding and when patients receive a check-in:

• Reduce interaction complexity occurring within the experience
• Educate patients on key goals
• Motivate patients to continue the program
• Provide the right information at the right time

The team

I worked alongside a Researcher, Product Manager, clinical team, and regulatory team.

My key contributions to the project were to collaborate with the team in heuristic evaluation, information architecture, user task flows, interaction, visuals, and prototyping.

The MIDS program

Type-II diabetes patients

Our users are Type-II diabetes patients who primarily use the Glooko mobile app. These patients are likely on medication, but now have to start using insulin to help manage their condition.

A program to keep patient’s insulin on track

When a patient is prescribed MIDS for the first time, they would encounter informational content to help them understand the details of the program.

Patients must take a glucose reading every morning and insulin every night. MIDS checks in with a patient every few days – prescribed by their doctor. Patients must increase or decrease their insulin if the average glucose readings don’t fall within the prescribed target range,

Some issues I discovered included:

• Instructions that over-explained the steps to a patient
• Complex language and medical jargon
• Illustrations weren’t providing helpful context
• Choosing doses is a critical step
• Providing help information at the wrong time

Make MIDS easier to use

Designing around regulations

We were unable to change workflow-related screens because changing them would require a new FDA submission. I ended up pushing to provide the right information at the right time and reduce the potential for errors.

Convincing expert stakeholders

The largest challenge was to get all the stakeholders on the same page because many of these stakeholders were professionals in the diabetes industry.

Below is an example of the many iterations it took to simplify the therapy content for patients. I wanted to make sure stakeholders realized patients aren’t diabetes professionals during many of our ideation sessions. This helped us move much faster throughout the design process 

Content matters, even down to illustrations

I felt there was a large disconnect between the content and the illustrations from the previous designs – so I created new illustrations to supplement the information for patients to digest.

But first, I lead a mood board exercise to help the team set illustration styles, best practices, and standards moving forward. We made considerations based on our brand and the capabilities of our designers.

Onboarding & instructions

The previous design failed to provide easy-to-understand content to inexperienced patients. I crafted an experience for patients to better understand the instructions by:

• Simplifying the language to be more customer-centric
• Removing medical jargon
• Grouping content at the right time

 

Patient check-in

I reduced the content to be more concise and used the illustration from onboarding to provide a better signal for a dose adjustment check.

 

Calculating their glucose

A patient can either receive a success message or a dose adjustment – based on their average fasting glucose.

 

Select an insulin dose

I advocated for a simpler design when patients choose their insulin – which removed any patient error from the previous designs.

It was critical for a patient to understand the context for choosing a dose.

 

Stay on track with next step instructions

Instructions must be simple to follow. I reduced the content down to the most important information for a patient’s tasks.

Research showed improved comprehension

We needed to perform the same steps in research as when we originally submitted it to the FDA. I worked with the researcher to set up a comprehension test between the previous and new designs.

Out of 14 participants, we found an increase in comprehension (instructions and importance) for the proposed over the current version.

The clinical and regulatory teams felt confident to ship the new designs. The product was soon launched with successful clearance from the FDA.

Future considerations

• Group fasting blood glucose readings by times when they aren’t tagged.
• Combine the days of taking insulin and glucose readings to show cause and effect.
• Continue to add more success states to initiate positive response and motivation.
• Optimize workflow to reduce cognitive load for memorization.