MediMate — Medication Reminder App

Summary

Remembering medication shouldn't take extra work

MediMate is a mobile app concept designed to help people remember when and how often to take their medications — built for a busy professional managing his own prescriptions and for a caregiver keeping track of her mother's.

Black-and-white photograph of one hand holding several loose pills while a second hand places another pill into it — Medication only works if it actually gets taken — on time, every time.

Many people struggle to stick to a medication schedule simply because it's easy to forget — and forgetting leads to missed doses and worse health outcomes. The goal was an intuitive, user-friendly platform that helps people remember what to take and when, encourages adherence through motivation rather than guilt, and fits into a daily routine instead of fighting it.

I worked the problem front to back through the design thinking process — empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test — detailed below.

Why it matters

Drug resistance. Missed or irregular doses can let a condition adapt to a medication over time.

Reduced efficacy. Inconsistent timing dampens how well a medication actually works.

Health deterioration. The condition a medication is meant to manage gets worse.

Compromised well-being. The stress of managing — or forgetting — medication takes its own toll.

01 — Process

Empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test

I followed the design thinking process front to back, moving from open-ended interviews all the way to a working, animated prototype — looping back to earlier stages whenever testing turned up something new.

Diagram of the design thinking process: five hexagons for Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test, connected by arrows with dashed lines showing iteration loops back to earlier stages — Five stages, looped rather than linear — testing sent me back to define and ideate more than once.

01 · Empathize & define

I interviewed users to understand their struggles with medication adherence, then turned that into user stories, journey maps, and personas — the foundation for a solution built around how these two people actually behave, not how I assumed they would.

Two personas came out of it: a young working professional who loses track of his medications amid a busy schedule, and a family caregiver making sure her mother takes hers on time. Each leads with a verbatim quote from the interview.

💊 Nick

Age 25 · Molecular Biologist · Philadelphia, PA

"I've tried everything in the book for trying to remember to take my meds on time and nothing works."

Goals

Take his meds regularly and on time so he doesn't go through withdrawals

Frustrations

His biggest frustration is when the meds are working — that's exactly what makes them harder to remember to take

Behaviors & context

Has always had trouble remembering to take medicine, let alone on time
Used to only take medication for the occasional antibiotic; now takes daily anxiety medication and vitamins as well

❤️ Julie

Age 58 · Family Caregiver · DeWitt, Iowa

"I just wish ma would read the instructions that I write down for her, but she can never remember — or just chooses not to remember."

Goals

Have peace of mind that her mom has taken all of her meds on time

Frustrations

Gets frustrated that her mom needs someone to verbally tell her how, when, and how much medicine to take

Behaviors & context

Caregiver for her mother, Michelle
Already divides her mother's medications into a weekly organizer — timing still slips anyway

Each persona leads with a verbatim quote from the interview.

User stories

"As a busy worker, I want to be reminded automatically and regularly when to take my medications so that I don't have withdrawals."
Nick's user story

"As a caregiver for my mom, I want to have peace of mind that she is taking all of her meds on time so that I don't always need to be by her side 24/7."
Julie's user story

Nick's user journey map: a table across three stages — pick up meds, set phone reminders, take medicine — with task lists, feelings, and improvement opportunities — **Nick's journey**, mapped stage by stage. Feelings run from neutral to annoyed at "set phone reminders," which the map itself flags as ripe for an automated fix rather than a manual one.

02 · Ideate

To kick off ideation I did rapid sketching — 8 hand-drawn concepts in 8 minutes, freeform, capturing as wide a range of ideas as possible before judging any of them.

Eight hand-drawn rapid sketches: a myself-or-someone-else selector, a medication list with an add-another action, a notifications screen, two add-medication screens (manual entry, search, scan barcode), a Take Med Now grid, a Take Med Now screen with mark taken, skip and snooze, and a leaderboard — Eight concepts in eight minutes — the profile selector, medication list, notifications, three ways to add a medication, the daily "Take Med Now" grid, and a leaderboard for motivation.

From there I moved selected concepts into Figma as low-fidelity wireframes to visualize and iterate before investing in higher fidelity.

Low-fidelity onboarding flow: welcome and sign-in screen, a screen asking whether you are setting up MediMate for yourself or someone else, an identity question, a birthday question, and a screen for adding medications by search, barcode scan, or manual entry — **Lo-fi onboarding.** Welcome/sign-in, then "myself or someone else," identity, birthday, and adding a first medication.

Low-fidelity home dashboard with a top hamburger menu, a weekly calendar strip, a list of medications to take, an add-medication button, and a separate bottom navigation bar — **Lo-fi home screen.** A weekly calendar strip and medication list — with navigation split across a top hamburger menu *and* a bottom bar.

03 · Test

I ran user studies on the low-fidelity mockups to get early signal on what was working and what wasn't, before investing further. Feedback went into an affinity diagram, clustering related comments to find patterns and prioritize what to fix next.

02 — What testing surfaced

Five clusters of feedback, two changes that mattered most

Back in Figma, I refined the designs to answer what the affinity diagram surfaced. Two of the five clusters changed the design outright.

Switching between accounts is needed for users who are also caregivers
Simplify the page that instructs users on how to add their medications
Consolidate the two navigation menus into one, at the bottom of the app
Offer a sign-up method that isn't linked to a social media account
Add more copy to pages that guide users toward what they should be doing

Let one account cover two people

Testers who were also caregivers had nowhere to manage medications for someone else without leaving their own account. The fix was a third option at setup, alongside the existing two.

Before

Set up MediMate for "Myself" or "Someone else" — one profile per account, no way to do both.

After

A third option, "Myself AND Someone else," lets a caregiver manage her own medications and her mother's from one account.

Lo-fi — Myself / Someone else.

Refined onboarding screen adding a third option, Myself AND Someone else, alongside Myself and Someone else — Refined — a third option added for caregivers.

One navigation menu, not two

The lo-fi home screen carried a hamburger menu at the top and a bottom navigation bar — testers weren't sure what lived where, or which one to reach for.

Before

A hamburger menu at the top, plus a separate bottom navigation bar — two menus to learn.

After

The hamburger menu is gone. Every destination lives in one bottom navigation bar.

Lo-fi home screen with both a top hamburger menu and a bottom navigation bar — Lo-fi — hamburger menu plus bottom bar.

Refined home screen with the hamburger menu removed, leaving only the bottom navigation bar — Refined — hamburger menu removed.

03 — Final design

From flow to working prototype

The prototype went through several rounds, refining and optimizing with each pass. Animations and interactions were layered in to show how someone would actually move through the app, and Figma's prototype testing let me run usability tests and gather feedback directly from potential users.

The full high-fidelity screen set: sign-up and Google sign-in, profile setup, a run of medication-setup prompts (form, timing, frequency, reminder type — shown here with Zoloft as the example medication), barcode scanning, and the home dashboard in both populated and empty states.

Animated demo of the final MediMate prototype opening on the Welcome screen, with a Get Started button and a log-in link for returning users — **The final prototype, in motion.** Opens on the Welcome screen, with Get Started for new users and a log-in link for returning ones.

04 — Reflection

Key takeaways

Illustrated key icon — A key icon from the original design file — a fitting mark for the takeaways below.

User-centric design

Prioritize user needs and preferences, especially for elderly individuals or those with health conditions.

Simple and intuitive UI

Create a user-friendly interface for easy setup and navigation.

Personalization

Allow customization of reminders based on individual medication schedules.

Multiple reminder types

Offer various reminder options like notifications, alarms, and in-app alerts.