Travel Healthy
Redesigned broken interface elements across medication logging, surveys, and connectivity issues
Overview
Travel Healthy is a mobile research app that tracks traveler health during international trips. Users receive daily surveys about their wellbeing and can log symptoms if they feel unwell. The app also includes a medication reminder feature for travelers visiting malaria-risk regions, helping researchers understand health patterns and medication adherence during travel.
Developed in partnership with travel clinics, the app collects real-world data on traveler health behaviors.
My role
Worked directly with Principal Investigators and software engineer
Responsible for synthesizing user feedback and implementing solutions
Timeline
July 2025 - Sept 2025
Team
1 Product Designer
1 Engineer
2 Product Managers (Principal Investigators)
The problem
"The easiest way to access the surveys was through the calendar tab at the bottom but that is not always intuitive."
"The malaria reminder was wonky at times to mark I had taken my dose each day. "
"Small comment but perhaps change the color of the daily survey button from gray to something that stands out a bit more, because I was able to easily do the malaria pill check daily because my eyes went right to the colorful icon but the daily symptom survey was less obvious."
"Would love to be able to go back on later dates and check off that we did in fact take our malaria pills! If we forgot to mark it that day we can't backtrack and it looks like we only took 4 days worth."
"The timing was off (despite sharing my location) so the daily surveys appeared to start in EST. I was 11-13 hours ahead so I was unable to fill out my surveys in the morning and if I forgot to manually go in and fill out my survey, I didn't get the reminder until after I went to sleep. So I often was filling out the survey a day late."
These frustrations appeared across feedback from 62 travel clinic users. While the app's core functionality existed, critical usability gaps were causing:
‼️ Medication reminder failures
The reminder feature, designed to help travelers stay on track with malaria prophylaxis, was so frustrating that users were abandoning it entirely
‼️ Missed health surveys
Users didn't understand how to access daily surveys, leading to incomplete research data
‼️ Technical barriers
Timezone sync issues meant travelers weren't receiving reminders at the right local times
These weren't minor issues. The broken medication reminder could lead to missed doses of important malaria prevention medicine. The hidden survey button meant researchers were losing valuable health data. Every broken interaction meant the app was failing at its two main jobs: helping travelers stay healthy and collecting research information.
Understanding the problem
I started by transforming 62 pieces of user feedback into an affinity map, searching for patterns in the frustration. Three critical issues emerged:
The vanishing log problem
Users would mark medications as taken, but the app failed to save it
The missed window trap:
Once a reminder was dismissed, users had no way to retroactively log their medication
The timezone puzzle:
Reminders depended on phones syncing to local time zones via internet connection. Since users didn't know they needed to connect periodically, many received mistimed reminders or none at all. This was a system limitation we couldn't fix directly.
The malaria reminder feature displayed medication schedules in a calendar view, but the dates weren't interactive. This created two key problems: users couldn't track doses they'd already taken, and the non-functional tap targets violated their mental model. When something looks clickable, users expect it to respond.
The malaria reminder feature displayed medication schedules in a calendar view, but the dates weren't interactive. This created two key problems: users couldn't track doses they'd already taken, and the non-functional tap targets violated their mental model. When something looks clickable, users expect it to respond.
Meeting Users Where They Are
For the timezone sync issue we couldn't fix directly, I designed a three-touchpoint reminder strategy:
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At trip creation (prevention)
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Day 2 pop-up if not synced (early intervention)
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Settings reference (ongoing support)
Dynamic Survey Access
The "Take Survey" button now speaks directly to users with context-aware messaging:
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"Enter today's survey" when new surveys await
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"Enter missed surveys" when past entries need completion
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"Survey completed" for confirmation
No more guessing whether there's something to do. The interface tells them.
Interactive Calendar Logs
I transformed the static calendar into an interactive medication history. Clear visual indicators (✓ for taken, ✗ for skipped) immediately show adherence patterns. Most importantly, each day is now tappable. Users can retroactively edit their medication status, matching reality to the record.
Designing the solution
Through journey mapping and prototyping, I redesigned the medication tracking experience around real traveler behavior because people don't always log medications the moment they take them.
The impact
These focused improvements transformed medication tracking from a point of frustration into a reliable tool for both travelers and researchers. Users can now accurately log their adherence patterns, even when life on the road doesn't go as planned.
The redesign is currently deployed with active users, supporting ongoing research into traveler health behaviors across multiple international travel clinics.
Reflection
Sometimes the most impactful design work isn't about reimagining entire systems. It's about finding and fixing the critical moments where user needs clash with interface assumptions. By listening closely to 62 travelers' frustrations, we turned a breaking point into a touchpoint that actually works.