ethicare process book

.a thesis by Tara Fedder

.table of contents

1. a. 2. a. b.

3. a. b. intro thesis question research do people actually want this? which services? medical bias & misinformation design process mentors considerations

c.

d. e.

5. branding & logo typography & color ux process installation concluding thoughts thank you to my friends, family, professors and mentors... couldn’t have done it without you!

f. g.

intro.

Designers seek to solve problems; it’s a simple statement, but it just about sums up the entire practice of design. As a student of said practice, I approached the question of my thesis by asking people in my community about their problems. A common one I heard was also one that I myself had; and, as it turns out, I’m just selfish enough to dedicate my thesis to this problem.

But wait. Before we jump into it, I need to give you some backstory. When I was sixteen, I learned about the unutterably dark reality of our food systems. I came face-to-face with all the atrocities we commit just for the temporary pleasure of eating meat and dairy. For years, it felt almost too much to bear, and the weight of this knowledge felt like it could crush me. I went vegan, but how could one person possibly hope to change these systems? A few years passed, and I finally realized that taking action, however small, has the potential to make a change. I went to my first action, street activism held by local people in the animal rights community. By taking this first step, I was introduced to a strong, vibrant, and hopeful community of people who fight against oppression of any and all living beings. My world expanded, and my hope returned!

It is to this incredible community of activists that I dedicate this thesis.

Ethicare was born out of a complaint I’ve heard countless times from people within the vegan and animal rights communities; I wish I could find a vegan doctor, therapist, hairdresser, tattoo artist, dietitian, masseuse… you name it. A couple years ago someone even told me they were looking for a vegan electrician! For most, this desire comes out of the frustration of finding service providers who use vegan products or are knowledgeable about vegan nutrition. For some, it comes from a preference for monetarily supporting people who share their lifestyle. But for everyone, it just plain feels good to be in the hands of someone who is respectful of your ethical decisions.

.thesis question

How can UX design principles be applied to prototype an app that connects members of the vegan community with service providers who are supportive and understanding of their ethical beliefs and lifestyle choices, thereby ensuring beneficial service experiences?

research.

.do people actually want this?

Although I based my thesis off of previous interest, I wanted some numbers. I conducted an interest survey amongst my target audience and here are the results! Of the 25 participants:

*4% said ‘yes, if...’ yes maybe

said they would be more inclined to visit a service provider if they were recommended by other vegans* 96%

76%

said they would be very or extremely likely to use an app designed to connect them with vegan-friendly service providers

somewhat likely (20%)

very & extremely likely (76%) not at all likely (4%)

.which services?

When asked which kinds of service providers people would be most interested in finding through the app, here’s what they said:

(photographers, movers, pet care, event planners)

(hairdressers, tattoo artists, fitness trainers, nail techs)

(handymen, plumbers, electricians, landscapers)

(spiritual services, chefs, vets, yoga/meditation)

.medical bias & misinformation

Although ethicare is a platform that allows people to find vegan-friendly service providers in any field, the responses to my interest survey showed that there was the most interest in finding medical providers. I wondered, does this interest simply come from a desire to be taken care of by people who share your values, or could there be real medical benefits to having a doctor who understands veganism?

It turns out that bias and misinformation often lead to vegan patients receiving inadequate care.1 A study from 2024 showed that despite the fact that “recent scientific evidence suggests that vegan diets could substantially decrease mortality rates… doctors hold on average negative views about plant-based diets.”2 This is compounded by the notable lack of nutrition education that medical students receive–in fact,

1. Romain Espinosa et al., “Removing barriers to plant-based diets: Assisting doctors with vegan patients,” Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics 109 (April 2024): 102175, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2024.102175.

2. Espinosa et al., 2024.

“during four years of medical school, most students spend fewer than 20 hours on nutrition.”

3. Lloyd Minor, “Why Medical Schools Need to Focus More on Nutrition,” Stanford Medicine, October 10, 2010, https://med.stanford.edu/school/leadership/dean/ precision-health-in-the-news/why-medica-schools-need-focus-nutrition.html#:~:text=And%20a%20good%20place%20to,than%2020%20hours%20on%20nutrition.

In one study, “less than half of the doctors [felt] competent to advise vegetarian patients,” and that number reduced to only one quarter of the doctors for vegan patients!4

In addition to a lack of nutrition education, medical bias against plantbased diets is also contributed to by the current training on evidence-based medicine. A 2013 study showed that medical students’ training “biases them against the studies that show the power of dietary approaches to managing disease.”5 These biases are often left unaddressed, again due to the current medical curriculum in the US; “there has been no systematic training of medical professionals in how bias affects decision making” in medical schools, other than financial conflict of interest bias.6

All of these factors can cause a breakdown of the doctor-patient relationship, and have been shown to lead vegan patients to seek out new doctors, hesitate to talk about medical symptoms, or mistrust the medical system altogether.7

4. Espinosa et al., 2024.

5. Laurie Endicott Thomas, “How Evidence-Based Medicine Biases Physicians Against Nutrition,” Medical Hypotheses 81, no. 6 (December 2013): 1116-1119, https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2013.10.016.

6. M. Elizabeth H. Hammond et al., “Bias in Medicine,” JACC Basic Transl Sci 6, no. 1 (January 2021): 78-85, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacbts.2020.07.012

7. Espinosa et al., 2024.

The ethicare project seeks to help address these issues by connecting vegans with better care.

Doctors who are either vegan themselves or have training in plant-based nutrition are likely to have a deeper understanding of the nutritional needs of those following a vegan diet. Having a doctor who shares their values and lifestyle choices can help vegan patients feel more comfortable and understood during medical appointments, and this increased comfort level may lead to better communication, trust, and adherence to treatment plans.

design process.

.mentors Stephen Schaf

Stephen is a UX/UI designer, creative mentor, and professor at CU Denver. He has given me valuable design guidance along the way, provided advice about my user research, and helped me iron out my visuals. I am very grateful to have such an amazing mentor for this project!

Dr. Sandhya Ravi

Dr. Sandhya is the Chief Medical Officer at Pleasant Pediatrics, and she is also knowledgeable about veganism. She has helped give me advice in regards to how the medical world works.

.considerations

While in the early stages of planning out the ethicare project, I assessed any existing design solutions on the market that are related to ethicare in some way. One of the most successful and widely-used apps targeting the vegan audience is Happy Cow, a platform that allows people to find and rate vegan and vegetarian restaurants. Since ethicare is also a review-based platform, Happy Cow served as my main source of inspiration as far as what is successful with my audience.

Image: Happy Cow logo, from March 2024.

One of Happy Cow’s successful elements that inspired me is its prominent ‘explore’ page, which is the first thing users see when they open the app.

Greeting the user with a map and several restaurant options immediately draws them in and encourages them to interact with the platform.

I was also inspired by Happy Cow’s sorting system, which uses different colors and badges for various restaurant categorizations. Since ethicare has many different sorts of service providers on one app, I decided to employ a similar sorting system. Several of Happy Cow’s features, like their social and feed pages, are less popular with users and seem to draw attention away from the main point of the platform. Assessing this helped me decide that I did not want to turn ethicare into a social platform in any capacity other than allowing users to leave and like reviews.

Image: Screenshot of the Happy Cow ‘Explore’ page in the app, from March 2024.

Other similar products on the market are few and far between, and are lacking in usability.

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit that does great work to advocate for more focus on proactive disease prevention in medicine, has a feature that allows users to search for local plant-based doctors.8 However, this feature is difficult to find on their website, and is underutilized because of this.

8. “Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine,” PCRM.org, accessed March 15, 2024, https://www.pcrm.org/. Images: PCRM logo and screenshot of their website home page, from March 2024.

The other platform that I was able to find that provides this service, Plantrician Providers, has a frustrating user experience and yields a very small number of results.9

These existing services helped inform my decisions on what to avoid to make my user experience better. They also confirmed that to have a platform that successfully helps people find providers, people need to enjoy using it enough to input enough providers to find! Building an enjoyable user experience and designing a strong brand image will help encourage people to use the ethicare platform.

9. “Plantrician Providers,” Plantrician.org, accessed March 15, 2024, https://plantrician.org/.

Images: Plantrician Providers logo and screenshot of their website home page, from March 2024.

.branding & logo

The ethicare logo combines the ideas of veganism (represented by the leaf) and searching for the right provider (the leaf also acts as a spotlight, illuminating the beginning of the word).

The logo should always be used with no less than one unit of space left empty on each side of it (as shown below), with one unit of space equal to the x-height, a.k.a. the height of the small letters (e, c, a, etc.).

.typography & color

sofia pro

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P

R S T

V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o

primary colors

HEX #251A2D

RGB 37 26 45

CMYK 78 82 51 65

HEX #F27032

RGB 242 112 50 CMYK 0 70 88 0

HEX #FFFBF1

RGB 255 251 241 CMYK 0 1 4 0

secondary & tertiary

HEX #205107

RGB 32 81 7

CMYK 80 42 99 42

HEX #A9DA8C

RGB 169 218 140 CMYK 35 0 58 0

HEX #1C4606

RGB 28 70 6

CMYK 79 46 100 51

HEX #FFFFFF

RGB 255 255 255

CMYK 0 0 0 0

HEX #C396FE

RGB 195 150 254

CMYK 30 42 0 0

HEX #FFDFA1

RGB 255 223 161

CMYK 0 12 42 0

HEX #67ECD4

RGB 103 236 212 CMYK 48 0 27 0

HEX #EC67C7

RGB 236 103 199

CMYK 12 70 0 0

HEX #A1D7FF

RGB 161 215 255

CMYK 32 4 0 0

.ux process

Creating the app prototype has been a labor of love. It started with lots of brainstorming and sketching on paper, which is something that helps me turn my ideas from disorganized thoughts into real designs.

My wireframes always start on paper. I find it easiest to work this way, since my ideas move quickly and working on paper helps to pin them down before they escape my mind forever!

Next, I move on to wireframing in Figma, a digital platform that allows designers to create interactive app and website prototypes. After wireframing, it’s time to create all the pretty visuals for the app, and turn it into the ‘final product’.

.user flows

In UX design, user flows are created to map out the path someone will take when using your product. They are super helpful in the planning stage! Here’s an example of what a user flow looks like for my project:

.component library

.navbar

Here are some of my most commonly used components in the ethicare app prototype! A component is an element of the user interface that is consistent throughout the app. These are far from the only compoents that make up ethicare, but they are the most widely used ones!

|Search by category, name, etc.

.search bar

.map .explore .favorites .profile .review

.star-rating-system

.ethi-rating-system

medical

mental health

nutrition

personal care

alt medicine

home services

spiritual other #details

.tags

.top-reviewer

.verified-provider

.vegan

.location-pins

I chose to use 2 rating systems, a traditional star rating system and something I call the ‘ethi rating system’. I did this because of my interest survey results; I included a free response section to allow people to add any thoughts they have about ethicare, and several people expressed that they wanted some way to rate how vegan-friendly a provider is as well as how good their service was. Hence the ethi rating system was born!

The badges, shown in the middle-right, appear on user and provider profiles to indicate different statuses. This component system allows for further badges to be added in the future!

.installation

The gallery installation of the ethicare project consists of vinyl decals, a monitor showcasing the final project, and a couple of my process books for people to flip through.

The installation is showcased at the Redline Contemporary Art Center in Denver, Colorado from April 26-May 12, 2024.

You can take a look at the ethicare installation proposal on the next page. The vinyl decals consist of the ethicare logo and a description of the project, and the decals are ordered through Mad Graphics 303. The final project is shown as a looping video on the monitor, showcasing the ethicare app prototype.

.by tara fedder

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concluding thoughts.

The ethicare platform aims to address a real need in the vegan community - the desire to find service providers who are knowledgeable about and supportive of a vegan lifestyle. My foundational research confirmed a strong interest in such a platform from my target audience, and uncovered concerning issues around bias against plant-based diets and lack of nutrition education in the medical field.

By carefully considering design elements from successful apps like Happy Cow as well as the shortcomings of existing provider search tools, I sought to create an enjoyable and effective user experience that will encourage both providers and patients to engage with the platform. Building a robust network of vegan-friendly service providers has the potential to substantially improve the healthcare and overall service experiences of those in the vegan community.

Ultimately, ethicare represents the culmination of my undergraduate journey, allowing me to apply UX design principles to a cause I care deeply about - empowering people to live in alignment with their ethics. I’m immensely grateful for the support and contributions of everyone who helped me bring this project to fruition. It’s my hope that ethicare can play a role, however small, in fostering a more compassionate world for all.