Public Health Tool

HealthWeather.us

I worked with Kinsa Health to build a publicly accessible news source for contagious illness, built around a unique dataset from Kinsa's network of app-connected smart thermometers.

OverviewProcess
methods
Component Systems
Data Visualization
Interface Design
User Testing
Wireframes & Prototyping

Project Overview

Kinsa is a healthcare product company on a mission to change the way we monitor contagious illness by bringing the same sort of early warning and public awareness to the spread of disease that we have for so many other persistent threats in our communities.

Surprisingly, the kind of population-level disease monitoring network that Kinsa builds simply doesn't exist aside from the millions of app-connected smart thermometers they've sold nationwide. The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented attention to Kinsa's efforts, along with the unique challenge of transforming their dataset into a broadly useful tool in just a few months.

As the product designer dedicated to data tools at Kinsa, I worked primarily on HealthWeather.us - a public website created to offer free insights about illness risk, courtesy of Kinsa's real-time fever dataset. I helped rapidly refactor HealthWeather's interface to offer COVID-19 early warnings, after which I helped position the product for a post-pandemic world.

cross-functional team
Product Team Lead
Erin Koehler
Product Manager
Daniel Doherty
Lead Designer
Megan Miles
Software Engineer
Barrett Hafner
Software Engineer
Pat Farnach
Software Engineer
Margo Schaedel
Senior Data Scientist
Hannah Somhegyi
Senior Data Scientist
James Rekow
team
Kinsa is a public health company that uses a network of smart thermometers, mobile apps, and websites to stop the spread of contagious illness
Client

My Role

:

Data Product Designer

I was responsible for executing all visual designs shown in this case study. As inputs, I received project briefs and was responsible for further synthesizing requirements from team discussion and brainstorming. I also originated the UI styling for HealthWeather based on an evolving conversation around product brands at Kinsa. I planned, conducted, and synthesized results from user testing under guidance from the lead designer. For feedback, I presented to the team at various levels, including design, engineering, data science, product, and leadership.

methods
Component Systems
Data Visualization
Interface Design
User Testing
Wireframes & Prototyping

The User

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The Business

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Project Impact

Kinsa took action on an unprecedented opportunity to show the public how an illness monitoring system could become a part of daily routine, just like checking a weather report online.

Coordinated efforts from many different teams at Kinsa resulted in over two million users in HealthWeather's first nine months as a source for illness information. Additional metrics revealed how the teams' strategic thinking inspired users to spend more time on the site and bounce less often. Further, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) integrated HealthWeather visualizations into their internal reporting.