AI Med+: Empowering International Students to Manage Their Health Abroad - @ Google AiStudio - Live Demo

Project Overview

AI Med+ is a mobile-first React application designed to help international students confidently manage their health while studying abroad. The app provides essential tools, including an AI symptom checker, a pill identifier, and a local medicine alternative finder, addressing the unique challenges students face in navigating foreign healthcare systems.

My Role: UX Designer, Product Manager, Front-End Developer (as a solo project)

1. The Problem: The Health and Wellness Gap for Students

International students often arrive in a new country with a limited understanding of the local healthcare system, unfamiliar over-the-counter medications, and a reliance on medicines brought from home. This can lead to significant stress and poor health outcomes. When faced with minor illnesses, students often resort to taking familiar painkillers by default, which may not be the appropriate treatment, or delay seeking care altogether. The problem was to bridge this gap by providing a reliable, accessible, and user-friendly platform that empowers students to make informed decisions about their health.

2. The Solution: A Personalized, AI-Powered Health Companion

AI Med+ was built to be a trusted health companion for international students. The app's core functionality is a seamless, three-pronged approach to solving the problem:

• AI Symptom Checker: Users can describe their symptoms in natural language (e.g., "I have a headache and a cough"), and the integrated AI provides potential health conditions and suggests appropriate local over-the-counter medications.

• Pill Identifier: The app allows users to snap a picture of a pill they have from home. The AI identifies the medication and provides details on its use, dosage, and side effects.

• Local Alternative Finder: This is the app's key feature. Once a user identifies a pill from home or gets a suggestion from the symptom checker, the app provides a list of identical or functionally similar alternatives available in the local country's pharmacies, along with their active ingredients and a map to nearby pharmacies.

This solution turns a stressful and confusing experience into a simple, three-step process: identify the problem, understand the medication, and find a local alternative.

3. My Design Process: Building Trust Through Clarity

My design process was centered on building an application that feels trustworthy and easy to use, especially given the sensitive nature of health information.

• UX Research: I conducted empathy interviews with current and former international students. A key insight was their overwhelming anxiety around medication, language barriers, and the fear of taking the wrong medicine. This highlighted the need for an interface that is clear, calming, and reassuring.

• Information Architecture: The app's architecture was designed to be straightforward and logical. The main navigation is a simple tab bar with clear icons for each core feature. The user flow is linear and guided—from symptom input to medication results—to prevent confusion.

• Prototyping & Visual Design: The visual design of AI Med+ is deliberately clean and minimalist, using a calming color palette of blues and whites to reduce visual stress. I chose a clear, legible font and used ample white space to ensure that information, particularly medication names and dosages, is easy to read. I also paid close attention to micro-interactions, like the loading state for AI searches, to assure the user that the app is working and providing a reliable response.

4. The Final Product: Peace of Mind in Your Pocket

The final product is a powerful tool that offers a sense of control and confidence to international students. By leveraging AI to simplify a complex, real-world problem, AI Med+ transforms a source of stress into a source of support. It demonstrates how a mobile application can address a critical human need, combining thoughtful design with innovative technology to make a tangible, positive impact on a user's life.

Key Learnings & Outcomes:

• Trust as a Core Feature: For a health-related app, trust is non-negotiable. I learned that trust is built not just through accurate information but also through transparent design, clear communication, and a calm, reassuring user experience.

• AI for Accessibility: This project demonstrated that AI's greatest power is not in generating content but in making complex, specialized knowledge accessible to everyday users.

• Impactful Problem Solving: By focusing on a specific, underserved user group, I was able to create a solution that directly addresses a critical and universal pain point, proving that even a small-scale project can have a large-scale impact.