Project Brief
Objective - A platform that aims to provide a 2-way system between the patient and the administrator to send medication reminders via short message service (SMS). This approach looks to provide older patients with a less complex application and increase their willingness to use mHealth applications.
Role – Product Designer/Full Stack Developer
Skills & Tools – User Research, Ideation, User Testing, HTML, CSS, Javascript, MongoDB, Twilio, Materialize UI
Team - Me
Timeline - 6 months
Problem
Why type 2 diabetes and older adults?
Recent statistics show that 4.7 million people in the UK are living with some form of diabetes.
This number is expected to reach 5.3 million by 2030 (Diabetes UK, 2019). Within this group of people, older adults are at more risk as one in ten over the 40s now has type 2 diabetes, and 90% of patients with diabetes suffer from type 2 (Diabetes UK, 2019).
Data source: https://www.diabetes.org.uk/about_us/news/diabetes-prevalence-statistics
MHealth apps need doesn't cater to the needs of older adults.
The growing population of people aged 60 and over is expected to reach a total of 2 billion by 2050, from 900 million in 2015 (WHO,2018). While there are great benefits of mHealth applications, they will only be entirely beneficial to the older population if the apps are adjusted to their needs, as current mHealth apps fail to acknowledge the age barriers.
Forgetting to take medications on time is common among older adults.
There are reports of poor adherence to oral medication treatments, which range from 10% to 87%. There are various reasons for not following the correct medication procedure for type 2 diabetes, but the most frequent reasons were "forgetting" and being more familiar with the older groups.
Here comes the design challenge:
How can I identify a different approach to developing a medication reminder application that will put older adults' needs and characteristics as the focal point, with a particular aim at patients suffering from type 2?
Research and Findings
Survey Findings: A survey was conducted with 5 older adults over the age of 40, who have used or still use a medication management application.
The results showed that almost all of the participants use or have used mobile applications in order to help them with the remainder of their medications. However, 3 of them stopped using the application due to different reasons but mainly due to the complicated design and too many features which don’t suit older adults.
The important findings that will impact future design include:
Older adults are open to trying mHealth apps for medication management.
The current medication management apps are too complicated for older adults to use.
Support would be greatly beneficial for older adults when using mobile apps for medication management.
Therefore it makes sense to focus on providing the user with a system that puts the older adults as the focal point of the design while also providing them support to manage their medications correctly.
Competitive Audit
A comparative audit was conducted to identify the design problems of the current top 5 medication reminders in the marketplace (Android and IOS). A usability heuristic analysis was constructed using the design heuristic principles of the Nielsen
Ideation
Agile User Stories
The application features were chosen using the Agile methodology, SCRUM product backlog was followed, which allowed the list of all things that needed to be done in the project. In this case, it was used to list down the requirements in a user-centric format, such as user stories, which gave a much better understanding of the features and functions the user needs
From research findings to design solution
I listed all the research findings: the users’ needs and the comparative analysis, and brainstorm the corresponding solutions. It allows me to organize research information in order to not slip any valuable findings. Afterwards, I select the features and the purpose of the features.
Wireframes
Usability Testing
All communication with the participants took place remotely over a Skype call.
The participant was given the link to the application and displayed it on a different device (IOS and Android) with the Google inspect tool. The participants were told to share their screens so that the investigator can access the participant's views in real-time. They were then given different tasks to allow them to get an understanding of the application. The two different types of participants were given various tasks; the students were given tasks associated with the admin. In contrast, the older type 2 patients were given tasks related to a patient. Here is a google doc link to the full task list.
Artefacts Demonstration
The live version of the application can be viewed here
Web app demo - Admin POV
Web app demo - Patient POV
Reflection
This project was my first end-to-end product development from research to development. I learned how to independently research new technology that I wasn’t familiar with such as node.js, the Twilio API and also MongoDB. It was at times frustrating when the code wouldn’t work, however overall it was a great experience to further increase my knowledge of web development. For future consideration, I would like to put more focus on UX and UI as this time I was constrained by time and my knowledge of coding.