R-Zero
Doppler App
A useful contract-tracing app
R-Zero was an early-stage startup passionate about helping to manage health pandemics via contact tracing - in 2018. Early interviews indicated most people would be uncomfortable with an invisible app tracking their every location. Doppler was meant to give users a useful health app on the surface but quietly track them in the background. Doppler launched on the Apple app store in 2018.
Team
Ken Sones (CEO), Alex Ray (engineering), Justin Sanders (BizOps), Billy Conn (systems architect), Ryan Stephen (design).
My role
I was the sole designer on the small team and took initial sketches to hi-fi mocks and prototypes. I had creative control over visual design and the freedom to add features if they made sense. The location-illness research journey and integrated news feature were exclusively my contributions. The design-to-handoff time was four days.
Research.
The R-Zero team heavily researched the Ebola outbreak that originated in Africa and used it to model concepts.
R-Zero conducted numerous interviews with regular people about how they manage illnesses and what applications they use.
INSIGHT: Tracking health with an app was more likely for people with chronic illnesses.
INSIGHT: People were concerned about being tracked and how the data would be used.
Design.
Geolocation-specific illness research flow.
Users would see a local quality score and a map where outbreaks were in their area to help them understand the conditions in their community. If users wanted to learn more about the flu, they could explore details, CDC guidance, contextual new articles, analytics, local clinics if they were showing symptoms.
Self-reporting flow.
Users could self-report illnesses and/or symptoms within the app to help them track their health over time which helped the app attain geo-specific data on outbreaks and suggest local clinics for treatment if symptoms aligned with certain conditions.
Geographical risk gauge.
A calculated risk score was based on air quality, pollen, and other public data with conditional colors to visually indicate levels of risk.
Live illness map.
Mapbox overlay based on confirmed hospital cases and self-reporting within the Doppler app.
Local environment metrics.
Populated by publicly available API data and R-zero environmental sensors.
Local health news.
Relevant local news articles sourced from trusted media outlets using keyword filtering and automated scripts.
After launch.
The app was live on the App Store for a few months with less than a hundred downloads. R-Zero took it down to work on another idea that would merge data with Doppler in the future.