Healing Through Design
Making the IBS Journey Simpler & Smarter
Role: UX/UI Designer
Tools: Figma, Photoshop
Timeline: April 2025- May 2025 (4 weeks)
Team: UX/UI Designer (Me)
Redesign in a glance
A quick look at how the app transformed—from confusing to clean, intuitive, and supportive.
The redesign improves clarity, navigation, and emotional ease for users managing IBS.
Old design
New design
From Research to Refinement
To uncover what truly needed fixing, I began by collecting user reviews, feedback, and app store ratings. This helped identify real pain points and understand where users felt frustrated, lost, or unsupported in their IBS journey.
What needs to be added and enhanced?
-
UI Consistency
Unified colors, typography, and components for a clean, cohesive experience. -
Simplified Navigation and Improved Visual Hierarchy
Streamlined app’s structure for quicker and easier access to key features. -
Redesigned Core Tools
Enhancing the Food Guide and Symptom Diary to be more visual and intuitive. -
Revamped Home Dashboard
A calmer, informative dashboard for easy daily use. -
Barcode Scanning (New)
Barcode functionality for instant food lookups. -
Login Feature(New)
For personalized tracking and syncing.
Stacking is complex
Find it clunky
Organization of food is random
No proper search feature
The Navigation could be smoother
Not user-friendly
As both a designer and someone managing IBS, I reflected on my own experience using the app. This personal lens helped me spot usability flaws, emotional disconnects, and visual gaps that might not appear in standard user feedback—but make a big difference in daily use.
Three areas where the experience fell short
1.
The home screen's information density and lack of sufficient visual hierarchy overwhelms the users and hinder intuitive navigation.
2.
The visual design of the icon is not intuitively clear, hindering user understanding.
3.
The existing menu and category arrangement does not fully support an efficient information retrieval process
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After identifying key pain points, I outlined what could realistically be improved in this redesign. I mapped out core features, set clear redesign goals, and carefully weighed the pros and cons of the app’s existing structure to understand what to keep, enhance, or remove.
What needs to stay?
To ensure the redesign stayed true to the purpose and identity of the Monash FODMAP app, I preserved its most essential elements:
Monash Brand Colors
Retained the official color palette to respect and reflect the Monash brand identity.Traffic Light Food Ratings
Continued the familiar FODMAP system to maintain clarity and user trust.Guides & Dietary Tips
Preserved educational content to help users navigate the diet confidently.Symptom Diary
Kept the diary feature for users to track personal progress and patterns.
1. What content or tools should be available from the home screen?
2. What will be the top 3 goals of users when they open the app?
3. What emotions might they feel (e.g., stress, confusion, urgency)?
4. How can I make the app feel calming and supportive?
With a clear scope in place, I moved into wireframing—mapping out the structure and flow of the redesigned experience. Before jumping into sketches, I asked a few key questions to guide my design choices:
Designing the Fix (Redesign)
How It All Came Together (Final Result)
What started as a cluttered and emotionally distant experience evolved into a calm, intuitive, and supportive space for users managing IBS. Through thoughtful UI enhancements, clearer navigation, and a more empathetic tone, the app now feels less like a medical tool—and more like a trusted companion. Every design decision was made with the user’s comfort and confidence in mind, resulting in a smoother, warmer, and more empowering journey.
Living with mild IBS, I experienced firsthand how confusing symptom management can be—especially when the tools meant to help feel overwhelming. This personal redesign aims to bring clarity and comfort through a more intuitive, empathetic experience.
Project Genesis
The Monash FODMAP app is globally trusted by people managing IBS, but while the science was solid, the experience felt… clinical. Users were navigating a maze of text-heavy screens, outdated visuals, and tedious tracking tools—often when they were already feeling unwell.
So I asked:
What if managing a medical condition felt more like support and less like struggle?
Source of inspiration
The Challenge
Empathy Through Data:
When User = Designer:
Scoping the Solution:
Sketching the Solution:
The Transformation
How the journey began?
Assets/Design System
User Reactions & Design Reflections
Feedbacks:
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Currently gathering user feedback—updates to follow.
Patience + Focus = Progress:
Designing a health app takes a lot of patience—there’s so much information out there, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. I learned how important it is to stay focused on the user's needs and the project’s goals, or you can quickly lose your way in the details.
Fresh Eyes Brings Clarity:
Sometimes when you're deep in the design work, you get so caught up in perfecting one thing that you miss something else important. That’s why having a second pair of eyes—and a fresh perspective—really helps. It brings balance and reminds you of what you might’ve overlooked.
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