I supported an entrepreneur, Gretchen, who is both a realtor and an occupational therapist, in bringing her vision to life: a streamlined, educational app for purchasing and placing grab bars to prevent home falls. Designed with inclusivity in mind, the app combines e‑commerce functionality with built-in guidance and filtering options to help users search by type, finish, and length. Gretchen aimed to close a significant knowledge gap around accessibility tools, inspired by the intuitive design of the DwellSafe AI app, which uses AI and clinician‑backed insights to assess home safety. My role spanned the full project lifecycle, from conducting competitive analysis and drafting requirements documents with the client to crafting wireframes and building the prototype. Following client feedback, I iterated on the design and delivered my rationale in a review meeting. The prototype is now poised for user testing, scheduled for this fall.
Navigating a project that stemmed from someone else's vision presented its own set of challenges, especially when ensuring that profiles and design elements aligned with the evolving standards and expectations of the client. I also had to grapple with communicating the need for substantial backend work, namely, APIs and data crawlers, to the client in a way that remained reassuring. Additionally, to design effectively, I needed to learn a great deal about unfamiliar domains like occupational therapy, grab bar products, and ADA compliance. Addressing these challenges required a strong commitment to universal design principles. To guide this, I created an accessibility checklist informed by ADA standards. This experience reinforced a valuable insight: for users to grasp functionality intuitively—especially in an accessibility-focused app—elements must be explicit and self-explanatory within the interface itself, avoiding reliance on tutorials or external explanations.
Below you will find the design files from my process, highlighting sketches, wireframes, iterations, and prototypes that tell the story behind the final product.