Keep A Breast
Android and iOS Mobile Application
Empowering young people around the world.
Founded by Shaney Jo Darden in 2000, Keep A Breast’s mission is to empower young people around the world with breast health education and support. They aim to reduce breast cancer risk and its impact globally through art, education, prevention, and action.
The application is built as a 5-step self-administered breast exam with resources and success stories from Breast Cancer survivors. Best of all? It’s completely free, making it accessible to anyone with a smartphone.
What we did
- User Experience Design
- User Interface Design
- iOS App Development
- Android App Development
- Firebase Analytics
- Admin Web Application
Application Tech Stack
Project overview.
Enhancing the user’s experience, one update at a time.
Our friends at Keep A Breast wanted to enhance the app experience by allowing users to create an account and to expand access to Spanish-speaking users in the United States & Mexico. In completing these objectives, we not only updated the front-end app, but also the back-end admin web app too.
Some key stats and results.
With hundreds of new accounts being created every week in multiple countries, the revamped mobile application is going strong. An app is never fully complete, so we will continue to roll out updates as the client’s needs and user’s needs grow to ensure they each continue to have a great experience.
16,000+ users
The application has drawn more than 16,000 users since its initial launch in April of 2020 at the time of this report (October 2021).
7,400+ self-checks
More than 7,400 self-checks have been administered by the users of the Keep A Breast app since initial launch in April 2020.
10 countries
The Keep A Breast mobile app has users in 10 countries across the world, including France, The United States, and Mexico.
4.8 rating
4.8 stars is the average rating for the Keep A Breast mobile application on both the App Store and the Google Play Store.
3,500+ accounts
More than 3,500 user accounts created within the first month of the application’s launch.
70.4% engagement
Users of the Keep A Breast mobile app have more than a 70% engagement rate, at the time of this report (October 2021).
The solution.
An app that helps women take control of their breast health!
Beautiful iOS and Android application with custom illustrations and gifs with step-by-step self-check instructions and a robust scheduling feature based on menstrual cycles. A custom backend and API with Internationalization and Localization built-in that updates iOS and Android apps in real-time when new stories are shared.
A new version with a new vision - three taps or less to access any resource, in 3 languages: English, French, and Spanish.
User Experience Design
For Keep A Breast, we needed to consolidate two different navigation pathways into one. We did this by adding in a bottom navigation bar. Due to this, we were able to condense the two navigations down to one for increased consistency within the application.
We also needed to integrate a user profile into the existing user flow. To do this, we popped a “Profile” section into the navigation bar where users could edit their preferences and review their past self-checks. The bottom navigation helped us keep all important paths in a single, easy-to-access space.
Design System
We utilized a brand-specific design system to ensure consistency within the interface of the Keep A Breast application. We aimed to maintain similar themes seen within the initial version of the app, so as not to confuse the exisiting users. This was accomplished by using the organization’s existing color palette, a similar wave shape used in the first version of the app, and rounded corners for a friendly feel.
This allowed us to create a seamless transition for the users who were already using Keep A Breast to complete their monthly self-checks.
Internalization & Localization
To stay true to Keep A Breast's grand and global mission, our App and the Backend had to be built with i18n functionality from the start. Allowing content writers and editors to edit content in English, French, and now Spanish for each resource with consistency required adding translation components within the same view.
The API was built with redundancies to check for completion of each translation before a resource is published for users in the app. Unlike the alpha release of the application, our latest update could update the resources on the application instantaneously without the need for increment version updates to Android and iOS App Stores.
Bug Reporting & Performance Monitoring
Testing is arguably the most important part of launching a new product. With InstaBug, we were able to launch the beta app through Test Flight and have our testers report any bugs and improvements. This allowed users to test the app in the most organic setting possible, reporting bugs as they came across them.
Each user reported bug or feedback was prioritized based on urgency: quick fixes were deployed incrementally and other bugs and general feedback was added to our product roadmap for implementation.
The challenges.
There were a few roadblocks, but nothing that a little research and elbow grease couldn't solve.
How were we going to encourage users to create an account? This problem haunted us for days, so what did we do? We assessed the current app’s reviews to see what our users wanted. In doing so, we discovered that users desired to save the information from their self-checks within the application. Although this was initially out of the scope of the project, the client approved this feature as they saw the value it would bring to the users. Once this was approved, we then needed to distinguish how much of the app users could access without creating an account.
We also needed to ensure that the app kept a consistent workflow while being translated to three different languages (with more languages on the horizon), as many of the partners & resources vary with each country.
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