GlucoAlert
GlucoAlert is a smartwatch app for diabetics to check their glucose levels when they don’t have their phone on them.
Target Audience: Diabetics of all age groups
Graphic Design, UX/UI, Figma, Adobe Software
RESEARCH
To start off the project, we were all individually tasked to brainstorm. We focused on the word “Smartwatch” and told to write words that associated with it, then with those words, associate words with them and so on for a period of 5 minutes. When our time was up, we took 2 words that didn’t go together and make something out of it. My words were “Health” and “Notification”. Prior to this task, we did extensive research into 3 different smartwatch apps to see what features they had and how they presented them, this allowed me to gain more understanding into a topic I wasn’t at first familiar with and therefore improving my design process.
PROCESS
As I have family members who are diabetic, I understood what screens were needed, but also what are good and bad glucose levels. I sketched out multiple different screens and prioritised what was most necessary for this project. The design process considered how to best display current glucose levels, an average throughout the day, and an alert to be aware of the low levels indicated by the watch vibrating. All this lead to a graph which you can swipe to view previous levels and the current number in a large glowing circle to be the focal point. If the levels got
low, a bell would pop up and the watch would vibrate to get the users attention. The home screen was inspired by my dads app he uses for his libre sensor, combined with its user friendly layout and other ideas I had sketched out. I concluded that always showing the levels
would be best to keep track, not only for the user but for others who could be helping. As the notification symbol, I went with the bell as it was the obvious choice to get the users attention.
BRANDING
Creating the colour palette was the next hurdle. Black, white and blue were chosen as the first two were the base would go with any colour, however blue was intentional as it’s the national colour of diabetes so I thought it would be fitting. A secondary colour palette with muted, calming green, yellow/orange and red were introduced for the various warning signs of the glucose levels. I also chose them as I thought they’d have good colour accessibility against the black background.
When coming up with the name, I used ChatGPT for inspiration. It came up with a list of different names however I settled on GlucoAlert as it made the most sense. I knew I wanted the name to be catchy and memorable but not cheesy or simple. GlucoAlert does what it says on the tin. It measures the glucose levels and alerts when they are reaching a lower point.
CRITIQUE
The critique I received on this project didn’t impact me much as it was simple things such as keeping all the icons the same such as filling in the bell on the Low Glucose Notification screen or making sure all the watch screens were all aligned when presenting them, and of course that is what I will do, however it was nothing substantial I needed to fix which is a bonus.
REFLECTION
As a quick project, I really enjoyed it. It was a topic I was interested in and close to my heart, time constraints did limit to bringing all my ideas to life. I would have linked it with an app on the phone to bring a wider scope for progression if this idea was to become reality therefore I did a colour analysis on the primary and secondary colours I chose on Figma and the results were positive, showing AAA for all involved.
