PPE Here

With the disruption of massive supply chains due to COVID 19, medical supply and equipment are in danger of running short when they are desperately needed. There are multiple organizations that support healthcare facilities to supply their PPE. Recently, research is showing that well funded larger medical facilities are able to replenish their PPE supplies, but smaller hospitals in underfunded communities are are still seeing mass shortages. Health care providers will recommend a patient to stay home if they have Covid-19 and do not have severe symptoms to help reduce the overcrowding in hospitals. For this reason, many patients are confined to their homes while infected. There are family members and loved ones taking care of these patients. We found there were challenges within communities, especially underfunded communities, in finding access to PPE to protect themselves from becoming infected. How can we reconnect communities to support the growing need of equipment to slow down the spread of COVID-19? PPE Here focuses on the community; regular people who are not healthcare workers, but also need PPE to stay safe and avoid contracting the virus. It connects regular residents with local stores and pharmacies, allowing us to all participate in the prevention of the spread of COVID-19. Users can view which stores nearby have stock on the PPE or disinfectants they are looking to buy. Stores can participate by registering and inputting when they receive stock of PPE such as masks, and even hand sanitizers As UX designers we are inspired by creating solutions to help the community. We build a prototype in Figma that address the issue at hand. We took an alternate approach to the problem, addressing shortages in the community because we realized that there were already many organizations addressing shortages in hospitals. The next steps to improve this app would be to conduct further usability tests with high-fidelity users to determine what changes need to be made to the existing prototype. Additionally we need to build out the Store Owner section of the app which requires research along with user interviews, building a persona and designing that area of the application. For the resident side of this app we would like to conduct further research to improve our design and build out the remaining pages. Thank you for your time and listening to our presentation.