Designing a UI for a wearable sensor
Metria, a wearable sensor from Vancive Medical Technologies, collects health and fitness data with greater accuracy than any other device on the market. Applications in medical research, health insurance, and day-to-day life, along with ease of use and disposability, make Metria IH1 an exciting next-generation lifestyle product. We partnered with the Vancive team to design and develop an application that visualizes the collected data, provides insightful lifestyle suggestions to users, and measures up to the breakthrough nature of the product itself.
Extensive user testing was essential to establishing the best possible experience. We quickly realized that to get the most useful feedback, we would need to wear the Metria IH1 for a seven-day period ourselves. This provided a valuable immersion into the data and allowed us to create a truly human-centered interface.
The Metria IH1 application needed to give users easy access to a range of data from their last wear period, including calories, burned, steps taken, sleep duration, and more. It was important that the interface be simple, despite the detail of the data that the device collects. At the same time, medical researchers and health professionals needed access to the full range of data points. We iterated through multiple interface options before reaching a solution that successfully accommodated both use cases.
Among the technical challenges of the Metria project was the connection between the device data and the application interface. We wrote a custom API to connect the two and established an OAuth 2 server for authenticating with the custom API. This allowed only authorized developers to use Metria data in their own applications.
Web development was a true collaboration: WHQ brought a modern front-end stack to the table, and Metria brought a solid backend infrastructure. The site is built in Laravel, one of two frameworks we prefer to work with. Laravel pulls in data to build a static, single-directory, serverless website that can be deployed to S3 or a CDN for optimal performance.
WHQ provided expertise in usability and workflow to improve the brand experience on our desktop and mobile app. Their deep understanding of architecture and design always impresses me.– James Kim, Product Line Manager, Avery Dennison
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