Improving the work-life balance for female nurses

Introduction

Exploring the impacts of an unhealthy work-life balance for women aged 25-45 with a family who are currently working as nurses, so that I can design an appropriate solution that improves their daily lifestyle and wellbeing

Project outline

Duration

5 months

Tools used

Miro

Microsoft Teams

Figma

UXtweak

My role

UX/UI Designer

The problem

60%

of female nurses struggle to balance their personal lives after extended shifts, raising their risk of experiencing anxiety or depression.

178%

increase in female nurses leaving the NHS from 2011 - 2018 due to being unable to cope with the intense pressure

76%

of 1.3 million healthcare workers were women. Nurses who are mothers are more vulnerable to mental health issues.

The solution

activate

Supporting female nurses with their health and wellbeing

Introducing ‘activate’, a dedicated wellbeing app for nurses, focused on providing guilt-free self-care through a wide range of activities. Features an anonymous messaging chat for open discussions, along with a resourceful page offering wellbeing insights, games for relaxation, and more.

Discover

I created some assumptions and questions to outline the focus of my research. I understood that I needed to clarify these opinions to ensure I empathised with my users' pain points.

Initial Assumptions + Questions

There aren't any coping mechanisms that female nurses can use.
Nurses don't have time to work or effort for other duties after their shifts.
How helpful is the support provided to female nurses?
Female nurses use apps/products to help with their work-life balance
There's no difference between busy and flexible working days
It's important to connect with other nurses or busy working mums

Research Questions

1. What are the challenges mothers experience working as a full-time nurse?

2. What are the coping mechanisms nurses who are mothers use to handle their work-life balance?

3. What support is available to full-time nurses who are mothers?

Understanding the problem...

My participants

4 female nurses:

Aged between 25 and 45

Has two or more children

1 life coach:

Supports women working in healthcare

Both types of users were recruited through snowball and convenience sampling techniques

...with various creative methods

Having an empathetic and curious personality helped during this phase as I naturally became the observer and listener in most situations, enabling me to focus on more intricate factors like body language and hidden insights.

Screenshot of all the research methods I used for primary research

Define

Once the primary research was complete, I used simple but effective analysis mapping techniques for each participant. For the participants who did diary studies, I mapped out their journeys on a busy and flexible working day to acknowledge any similarities or differences with an experience map. This helped me understand their feelings throughout the journey's timeframe while spotting opportunities for innovation for the next stage.

For other methods, like participation observation, I used behavioural and empathy maps to track their movements and understand their feelings along with their actions to see if any frequent patterns appeared between what they say, think, do, or feel.

Experience map based on one of my participant's diary study

What I found out

To conclude all the data I have obtained, I did affinity diagramming and variable analysis to identify the key insights that can be used for innovation in the next stage. Using the findings from affinity diagramming, I conducted variable analysis to look for any patterns in which the participants were clustered together and tried to understand if their relationship made sense. I then selected the variables with the most prominent patterns and converted them into insights. The two main insights (which I visually represented with personas) were the feeling of guilt and gender inequality regarding household chores.

I also detected a common link between them: a lack of productivity. Due to feeling guilty, they don’t function as well when working or at home; they feel tired and unable to complete tasks, which is the same with household chores. They are expected to do all the household work, so they become unproductive.

Guilt

Home Inequality

Image showing how my two insights are connected

Iterative design process for the final eight weeks

After understanding what the research data means for me as the designer, I decided to use an iterative cycle to refine and revise the product quickly, especially when it is crucial to identify the features and functions more deeply.

I was once someone who often took the easy route, experiencing no hurdles or challenges. However, over the last year, I have grown into welcoming challenges that enable me to make complex decisions, forcing me to become adaptable to change, leading towards a more iterative mindset. I am grateful for this diversion and look forward to expanding on it in my career.

Image showing my iterative design process throughout the 2nd phase of the project

Pivotal moment

After refining the previous insights with 'How might we' statements and conducting a co-design workshop with the same four nurses and some extreme users to understand what I meant by "productivity" and to gather the users' opinions, I discovered that one of the main significant desires they had was personal time.

I did some secondary research to learn why female nurses are currently overlooking existing me time resources to help with their wellbeing and found that public stigma was a recurring factor in the literature and other reliable sources.

1

'Despite nurses' existing knowledge of healthy behaviours...it does not always translate to self care'

2

68% of female nurses prioritise their patients' health and wellbeing before their own. Feel they need permission from others to be self-caring and self-compassionate

3

'Identified as being "heroes" throughout the COVID 19 pandemic, making them feel like they shouldn't ask for help'

Refined Vision

There is an opportunity to design a product or service for female nurses who are also mothers who want guilt-free time and a safe space to communicate their struggles openly, BUT live in fear of judgement from society, making them reluctant to engage in mental health and well-being support.

Guilt-free

Self-love

Reassurance

Develop

To initiate the next phase of the design process, I utilised an evaluation matrix to identify the ideas that would best benefit users and integrate the public in a minimal yet meaningful way, such as advertisements promoting the product in the public domain.

Evaluation matrix containing some initial concepts for the solution

Com-B Model and Co Designing Insights

The COM-B model of behavioural change research, and the second co-designing workshop featuring various tasks, revealed to me that the preferred idea was a gamified wellbeing app that would provide activities such as challenges or experiences. This will encourage users to have guilt-free personal time, take initiative, and gain control over their health and wellbeing.

Capability

The app must be fully option-based, driven by several factors such as allowing users to select activities aligned with their interests and goals, to personalise the experience.

Opportunity

Offering one-to-one support with an anonymised messaging feature to talk with others about their struggles in a safe space.

Motivation

Incorporating point-based incentives through additional resources to enhance their knowledge, for example, could lead to increased interaction, encouraging engagement.

Understanding the journey

To better understand my user's experience with the app, I updated her persona to align with the refined vision and illustrated the journey map from her perspective. Detailing the steps she took to discover the app 'Activate' and determine that it was the right solution to use in solving her pain points.

A user journey map from Sophie's point of view

Deliver

Advert inspiration for styling and layout

Creating a mood board helped me visually communicate my ideas and inspired me when I made the advert. One key takeaway from the inspiration was that it was really important to have a short but eye-catching message to attract users.

Typography

Arial

Roboto

Open Sans

Tahoma

Content Inspiration

Advert inspiration for a specific subject

Colours

#CCE3FC

#95BADB

#1D5AA6

What the advert may look like

Time to create a wireframe

I evaluated my competitors' strengths and weaknesses in relation to my own idea, which helped me identify potential feature adjustments. Key takeaways included providing activities that users will be familiar with, ensuring they are not timed, and offering resources to encourage extra user engagement.

Now that I had gathered sufficient evidence, I began drawing some basic sketches. This allowed me to lay out my ideas for the app's features, taking into account the key takeaways from the competitive analysis. Once complete, I then followed through with the digital version of the wireframe.

activity in action screen digital wireframe

Game resource info screen digital wireframe

User matched info screen digital wireframe

Assessing the advert and wireframe's layout, design and functionality

I tested with four nurse participants, using two methods: comparing basic mockups for the advert and card sorting with low-fidelity app screens.

The card sorting aimed to assess the interaction of the screens. By also incorporating the think-aloud technique, I aimed to understand their thoughts and preferences. Both these methods helped validate the app's design and the users' perception of the flow and content. The key insights I received from the user testing are as follows:

1

Preference for a friendly yet outdoorsy campaign style over social media aesthetics, as the latter tends to be overlooked.

More welcoming language, as they feel tired of being 'needed’ all the time.

2

Simplification by minimising the number of taps required for information access, particularly on the activity and messaging pages.

3

Incorporating likes on activities to showcase popular choices, thereby encouraging user engagement

The final result

Due to personal time constraints, user testing of the updated prototype couldn't be conducted. Therefore, based on data and insights from previous stages, I assessed and refined decisions for both the advert and the app myself.

Advert

The advert was enhanced with a more engaging style, inspired by external sources such as adverts on the train. It’s placed on a billboard by the supermarket, as that was one of the main spots my participants said they would be more likely to notice an advert.