diaPETic (continued)
There is no doubt that being a teenager is difficult. Peer pressure, cliques, hormones, grades, clothes, parents, curfew, and fitting in are just a few of the issues teens face, now imagine dealing with diabetes on top of all that. In a year long project to finish my master’s degree, I attempted to address this scenario.
Audience
Teenage girls deal with a lot of pressures. With the addition of a complicated disease that must be addressed on a daily basis, I wanted to help teenage girls deal with the emotions that are involved in being a teenager and with blood sugar highs and lows.
User Research
- Diabetes Care Clinic Interview
- Emotional Analysis of Everyday Artifacts Survey
- Emotion Identification through Picture Association
- Medical Device Investigation
- Glucose Testing Autoethnography
Final Design
During my research I confirmed my assumption that appearance is really important to teenage girls. To address the need that my audience has to appear normal, I decided that one of the best ways to improve a blood glucose meter for the population was to hide it from obvious view. The iPhone provides a platform accepting of periphery devices to work in conjunction with an application.
The iPhone problem solved one of the initial needs of the population, but I wanted to move several steps further. I believe that glucose meters should acknowledge the user as an emotional being, not just a blood sample to be analyzed.
Blood Sugar Testing
Glucose measurements are painful, but they can also be stressful. A low reading can cause a diabetic to feel discouraged, out of control, angry, sad, depressed, etc. Glucose meters, along with most other medical devices, usually focus on measurement, but what about the emotional part of disease? In an effort to address the emotional responses of my user group, I created a character that is empathetic. The character displays emotional and physical feelings based on the user’s reading. The pet also makes suggestions to right the blood sugar reading if it is at an unhealthy level.
Rewards and Accessories for Good Behavior
To encourage the user to continue checking their sugars, rewards are given for regular use of the meter. While it might seem more intuitive to give rewards and power-ups to someone who has continually good sugar readings, I didn’t want to discourage someone who was trying their best to manage their disease, but having trouble regulating their sugars. So instead of good blood sugar readings, my goal was to help individuals develop the habit of self-monitoring hoping that this would lead to better disease management over time.
Rewards are given in the form of accessories with which the user can dress up their character. Exploration of identity through dress is a major part of adolescence; therefore, I thought it would be of great interest to my target audience.
History, Trends, and Physician Communication
To further assist in self-monitorization, the application puts together a visual display of the user’s blood sugar readings and trends using output similar to what they receive after glucose testing. Further the user can share their glucose readings with their physician with the “Doc Knock” function. Knocking the phone together with a doctor’s phone will cause a transfer of data to the second phone. The gesture of knocking phones is intended to symbolize a partnership between the physician and patient while creating an easy way to share information. If the physician does not have an iPhone, “Doc Knock” can be done through email.
Lessons Learned
There is so much designing an entire application. Even the smallest pieces of interaction were the result of something I learned during the process.
People are invaluable even in something that is considered a solo project. It would be impossible to count the number of times that I felt stuck and a conversation with someone would thrust me into an expanded world of thought.
There are ways to learn an incredible amount about a user group even without direct access to them.
Closing Notes
Unfortunately, the technology and development requirements to create this app are not currently feasible; however, I believe that a peripheral device for glucose testing will soon be developed for iPhone and other smart phone platforms. I really enjoyed this project and I feel as if the medical device industry could greatly benefit from the work of interaction designers because there is much more to medical care than science.
