EARLYBIRD HEALTH AID
After researching and dissecting the impact of income on health, I designed a solution to help low-income families create preventative care plans and receive general treatment at a fraction of the cost.
After the 2020 election and pandemic, health care (particularly universal healthcare) was at the forefront of political discussion.
In order to tackle such an issue, the first and most important thing to do was research. I learned about many of the ways that having low-income can effect a person's health, and why:
(click the image to bring up the research presentation)
Based on these ideas, I made sketches of solutions for the problems, both in terms of plans to tackle the issue and in deliverable goods, products, software, or anything else that would need to be physically designed.
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The Misfits idea already exists, under the same name. The Union's Union would be a good idea to help workers get health benefits, but I felt it didn't directly target the project I researched. The community exercise equipment was also a fun idea, but I know several communities have implemented something similar and it still didn't tackle the huge issue of preventative care.
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I chose to move forward with EarlyBird as it was the only idea that I felt was directly working to remedy the issue a lot of low-income households have: not having access to consistent, preventative care.
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(click the image to bring up the gallery of sketches)
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CONCEPT
EarlyBird at its core is a company that connects anyone, including low-income families, with healthcare at much lower prices than normal. It is not health insurance. It is a network.
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Users can do two things with the EarlyBird company. The first is to establish a long-term healthcare plan, where they can sign up for a certain amount of check-in a few years in advance. Being able to fill the schedule far ahead of time helps doctors provide lower costs that are locked in. The user can either use one home doctor, or EarlyBird can search for different doctors that have spaces available around the time of their appointment.
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The second task users can accomplish is to find last-minute appointments that doctors need filled (due to cancelations or no-shows) so they can attend at a lower price. Users would be notified of new available times in their area, and can choose to fill the appointment. To make the transition easier, the user can fill out a medical history profile on the website that would be forwarded to the new doctor when necessary.
REFERENCE SITES
I dove into the field to determine what common health product designs trends were, and whether I wanted to replicate or disregard them in my own brand.
Overall, health products and services (especially health insurance) follows the same trends: blue and white color palettes to show trust, cleanliness, sterility, honesty, etc, and paired geometric and serif fonts. Overall, this gives a professional yet impersonal feeling to those sites, but it does well in boosting its association with healthcare.
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Oscar Insurance and Sidecar Health were two companies whose branding I appreciated. While they still used the trend of blues and whites, they generally kept the color palettes bright and spiced it up with poppy accent colors. This made the sites feel much more inviting. I decided to use these sites as reference for my own.
FIELD EXAMPLES
After finding a good starting point, I found references for more specific parts of the brand, like fonts, icons, and logos. I wanted to create a clever and easily identifiable logo, so I collected references of negative space logos. I also collected samples of both serif and sanserif fonts, and here I decided to follow the trend to use one of each within the EarlyBird brand. Finally, I stored examples of icon sets, making note of their cleans and minimal designs.
Below are two examples of logos I found in the field that helped guide my design.
FINAL SELECTIONS
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Finally, I decided on a color palette and fonts (of the fonts above, I ended up only using the first and last typefaces).
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I wanted to stray away from the most common color palette and be a fresher brand that sets itself apart from typical health insurance sites (which EarlyBird is not). I deepened the traditionally used blue navy color to a richer purple, but kept blue in the design through an icy lighter color. To create a complimentary color theme and add accent colors to the mix, I used a light yellow and peachy-orange to highlight parts of my sites and deliverables.
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I wanted my fonts to be fresh yet professional, so I made use of the sanserif + serif font trend I saw on other sites. I used the fonts "Source Sans Variable" and "Embury Text".
LOGO DESIGN
Based on the name of the company and the ideas surrounding it, I wanted to incorporate either birds, wings, or time into the logo. As shown, I did several iterations of the logo, but finally decided on the logo below. It had a bird, sharp line work that flowed with the text, and utilized negative space and the text to create a cohesive image.
ICON DESIGN
Now that I had a logo to unify the design, I wanted to create a unique icon set using a bird as a motif throughout my brand.
I started by brainstorming what I would need to visually signal to my sites' users, and came up with three main things: creating an early health plan, finding a home doctor, and finding last minute appointments. Based on these major tasks, I created bird-based icons that nodded to these actions without just being an explicit drawing of the action itself.
WEBSITE DRAFT
I started on fleshing out the largest part of the business, which is the website. I focsed on the main page at first, creating a welcoming landing page to be the face of the company. The main page needed to have the most important aspects of the company as well as a good place to get started for new users.
APP DRAFT
I knew I would also need to create mobile counterpart for the website, and so I created a draft for that as well with a user's most important information, like upcoming appointment date, account balance, and due payments.
This poster was made for doctors that partner with EarlyBird to hang in their window. In addition to helping with identification for new clients, it also serves as advertisement for EarlyBird.
FINAL DELIVERABLES
I expanded the website to include a medical page where the user could create or edit their care plan, find a nearby doctor, or find a last-minute appointment. The app homepage was redesigned to have more easily digestible UI and more streamlined functionality. The poster largely remained the same, with only slight positioning and color changes.
