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Comment by hombre_fatal | Hacker News Reader

Your link actually shows you why there is no UX advantage.

OP is only two cycles into their pregnancy. A paper test can pick up on this tiny HCG measurement and show something. A digital test cannot because it's going to pick a higher threshold if it only wants to give you a binary result. A digital test will tell you that you're pregnant when you're far enough along for a paper test to be obvious.

There are so many "can someone interpret this paper test?" questions not because paper is inferior but because they are trying to interpret results 0-2 months into their pregnancy and paper can actually give you a faint reading here.

A digital test could support that by showing "possibly pregnant" which is back to the same UX, and showing "not pregnant" during this time isn't much of a win either.

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This is correct except the 0-2 months. Even if you accept dating a pregnancy as starting at the start of your previous cycle, these tests will be positive before your next cycle would have started. The typical “is this a positive test” is around 8-10 days post ovulation and a few days before their period is due. They’d get a definitive test 1-3 days later. So the period of “it’s positive but I can’t be sure” is something like 0.9-0.97 cycles into a pregnancy (again, with the weird dating from your last period’s start and complicated by the fact that most people don’t know ovulation dates & cycle lengths frequently vary).

If you’re well into a pregnancy, tests will actually start getting lighter due to how the tests work. It’s called the Hook Effect and can start happening around 5 weeks of pregnancy (https://www.captodayonline.com/Archives/0612/0612f_not_so_ob...).

A digital test can be tuned to a better sensitivity.

The UX advantage comes from giving a definitive answer. The answer can change at later times when the body starts giving stronger signals. You can simply indicate that you need to wait X number of days to detect the pregnancy and problem solved.

This is much better UX than learning biology and chemistry to be able to read a test result. What does a faint line means? Probably means you need 4 years degree in a related field to have an educated guess. To have a definitive answer you need a to have a career in it.

Realistically though, it means you will need to ask someone who already have the degree, which means what good is the test for?

The digital test does guide you how to get to the right answer. Yes, if the threshold is too high and you test too early it can give you a false negative but this is a simple problem that can be solved by recommending a second test in few days.

It should just show the value and have the definition of them written on the box, UI should not be a concern at all if you have to have electronics in this case.

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