Unfold
An informative and fun platform for young adults to learn sex education
Mobile · UX Design · Visual Design · Research
Overview
When I was browsing on the Internet, I noticed that most people have limited knowledge about sex education. Most adults even know almost nothing about their own bodies. There were also many cases related to girls got raped by teachers at schools. Most students knew nothing about sex education so they didn’t know how to protect themselves.
This project initially started with a design prompt to help increase young adults’ sex knowledge. Under a limited timeline, I conducted interviews and developed the competitive analysis as a starting point. After defining the problems, I built up user personas, journey maps to determine my user flow. I also sketched the wireframes, create storyboards and finalize my prototypes. Unfold’s selling point is its ability to contains interesting online courses, provides a platform for young adults to learn about sex from factual sources and professionals, and answers questions for them.
Timeline
1 month (November 2022)
Team
Solo Project
Tool
Figma
Role
UX Researcher, UI Designer, Visual Designer
Pre–Research
In United States, <50% of adolescents reported in 2015–2019 that they had received instruction on where to get birth control before they had sex for the first time.
In China, HIV is now growing fastest among adolescents, and more than 90 percent of infections occur through sexual relations.
From January to September last year, there were 96,000 new HIV infections, with 24.4 percent in the 20-29 age group, according to China's National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention.
Timeline
Day 1–5
Conduct research to define the problem
Day 6–12
Find insights from competitive analysis and user interview
Day 13–17
Define the goals and develop sitemap
Day 18–25
Hand Sketch to create storyboards & design low-fi wireframe
Day 25–30
Build a Hi-fi prototype on Figma and next steps
01 – Research Process
The Problem
1 – Have no idea of where to access formal channels to learn about sex education
2 – School courses related to sex education are often sparse and shallow
3 – Too shy to reach out to their parents/teachers/doctors about asking sexual questions (Many elders are shy away from talking about sex education too)
Competitive Audit
I conducted an audit of other apps related to sex education. I focused more on whether they offered the sex education courses by analyzing their basic information, strengths and weaknesses.
User Interview
Gain a thorough understanding of users’ preferences, thoughts and feelings
I interviewed three people whose age is around 20 – 23. All of them have studied in China before college.
Key takeaways from user interviews:
Sex education should be start as early as possible, especially in elementary school.
In their early school life, they have been exposed to this knowledge but were not very impressive to them.
Most of them first heard of sex education on the internet.
Project Format
Mobile > Tablet Application
Nowadays, lots of young adults owned their phone very early, especially around 13 y/o. They can use their phone to learn sex education and ask questions on the app by themselves. It also provides them a secret place for whose parents are shy away about sex. Tablet version is still considerable as its screen is bigger enough to protect children’s eyes.
Target User Group
12 – 23 years old young adults
According to my user interview, most interviewees hope that young adults can learn sex education as early as possible. 12 years old is also a signal to have an understanding of love, sex, and sexual orientation. For those who has already been around 20 years old, it’s a good time to discover something you are unfamiliar with to better solve your current relationship.
02 – Design Solutions
Dedicating to create a formal online learning platform and resource library for young adults to learn about sex education
Project Goals and Related Features
1 – User-Friendly Registration
2 – Added related features
3 – Playful User Interface
Information Architecture
Concise registration questions
Clear and comprehensive onboarding process
Contain interesting online courses
Provide a platform to learn about sex from factual sources and professionals
Establish a good community and resources sharing platform
Outline all elements to make them clickable
Cute main illustrations to attract users’ learning interests
I separated this app into five parts: introduction & onboarding, homepage to continue your study, start new courses, discover interested topics, and ask questions anonymously in the community.
03 – Design Process
Hand Sketches
Intuitive Interactions & Playful Interfaces
In order to finalize the design, I conducted multiple design iterations through hand sketches, focusing on the user experience: onboarding process, navigation bar icons, categorization, etc.
As this app mainly serves young adults, I focused more on how to keep them engaged and navigate easily when using our app.
Digital Wireframes
After hand sketches, I designed complete low-fidelity wireframes that contained all features I mentioned in the paper wireframes. Moreover, I added more frames about Quizzes feature inside Course part and post a question.
Main Features
Onboarding
1 – Concise & Bold UX writing
2 – Bright colors and Clear categorization
3 – Language setting & Sequential blocks
User Scenario
Sandra wants to learn about sex education using her time fragments. But she doesn’t know where to start. Today she searched the apple store on her way to school and downloaded a sex education app, Unfold. Unlike other apps, she likes the visual design of Unfold. In the onboarding process, after Sandra inputted her name, age and gender, she picked all interested topics she wants to learn in the app. She is able to learn the overview features of the app through the illustrated tutorial.
Home
1 – Ask doctor’s advice quickly
2 – Keep track of current courses anytime
3 – Take quick look of latest news and posts
User Scenario
On the landing page, it contains simple features help users quickly start their journey. Sandra swipes through the first carousel. Right now she doesn’t need to ask doctor’s advice, but she feels reassured if she needs help in the future. Sandra can easily figure out the courses she left through the progress pie chart. She contemplates what to read while looking at the reading times of Weekly spotlight and see current popular topic by the highlighted trending topic.
Learning Courses
1 – Concise and essential article
2 – Little follow–up quiz
3 – Save your favorite lessons
User Scenario
Sandra finds an interested topic she would like to learn on the app. Since she only has 5 minutes for her class break, she quickly browses the description of the course by seeing the course information, duration and description. She loves this course, so she swipes to contents page and wants to take a quick glance. As the article and quiz is short, she finished some parts in a moment.
Reading
1 – Save your favorite articles
2 – Add a rating of the article
3 – Fixed arrow for returning convenience
User Scenario
During the lunch time, Sandra browses through the Daily Picks and finds a 3–minute reading article. She thinks this article’s topic is really meaningful, so she saves to her collection in case if she needs to come back to it. When she scrolls down, the fixed arrow helps her to come back to main page if she needs. After reading the whole article, she thinks this article is helpful to her, so she clicks Yes under the user preference question.
Q&A
1 – Browse posts through filters
2 – Filter is ranked by trending topics
3 – Ask questions anonymously
User Scenario
Sandra is curious about current trending topics so she takes a quick look at the filters ranked by trending topics. She can easily see the specific topics through clicking on the filters. After seeing all the posts, she gets a question so she click the “+“ button to write her posts and post it anonymously.
Other Features
When users log into their account and land the homepage, they can quickly ask free doctor advice in the purple box. They can choose the doctors they want to ask through clicking the filters under search. In the doctor’s profile, users are able to ask a query or request a call if they need.
In the Course part, it contains Live Lessons and Upcoming Courses for users to explore. Also, users can use the “Categories” feature to see related courses.
In the Discover part, users can also read ranked books related to sex education. There are some other topics that users might be interested in in the end of the part.
04 – Future Considerations
Next Steps
Building essential features including quick search and user profiles
This project is still at the initial stage. The next steps will be to continue testing the current version based on different scenarios and to collect feedbacks from users. I will also pay more attention to features like searching and user profile. Since this is an app for young adults, it’s necessary and meaningful to let them test these new features.
The quick search feature makes using the app easier and helps users look up specific topics. User profiles save users’ favorite articles and past courses, which increases user retention rate.
A/B testing can be used to determine whether the search feature is helpful for user retention and to see if it can diversify user preferences.
