Pill Trakk: medication reminder - UX case study
This article proposes a design concept for a medication reminder app.
This first version of this project is based on user hypothesis and hopefully, in the future, I would propose another version enriched with actual, from the field, user research. Nonetheless, this case study contains support material for user research, such as behavioral variables and interview questions. The primary persona developed is a proto-persona (or persona hypothesis, based on the support material of user research).
This document contains the following deliverables:
1. Research
Scope definition
This project addresses the issues of medication non-adherence.
Medication adherence usually refers to whether patients take their medications as prescribed (e.g. twice, daily etc.), as well as whether they continue to take a prescribed medication. Failing to do so (non-adherence) will be prevalent and associated with adverse outcomes and higher costs of care as the medical situation could worsen.
Topic research
In order to propose adequate solutions, we need to understand what are the causes of non-adherence to medical plans. What are the pain points that prevent a patient to follow its prescribed treatment?
According to the World Health Organization the causes of non-adherence to medical plan can be grouped in 5 dimensions:
In a survey of 10,000 patients from the Boston Consulting Group, the most common reported reason for missing medications was forgetfulness (24%), followed by perceived side effects (20%), high drug costs (17%), and perception that a prescribed medication would have little effect on their disease (14%).
The forgetfulness factor would be levied with the help of a reminder in form of an alarm when intake is to be taken, which is the purpose of the app.
To counter the non-adherence related to perceived side effects, adverse drug reactions, health literacy, characteristics of the disease, the app could also educate the user about the drug form the prescribed medication plan. For this, it is assumed that there will be access to a large worldwide database of documentation about medication in circulation. This way, the user will be able to know what are the known side effects of the medication he or his dependents are following.
For the high drug costs concern, gain access to a worldwide database of medication would be required. The idea would be to propose a cheaper alternative to medication (called generic). Usually, a prescriber will write a prescription for a specific brand of drug. Generic drugs are the same molecule as a prescribed brand drug, they have the same effect and purpose to cure illness but are cheaper, less known. It could be good to propose to the user these alternatives.
To address social support and cognitive functioning, the reminder could include the family members’ treatment plans of the app user, such as children or elderly dependents.
Competitive analysis
3 direct competitors were selected for the competitive analysis: Medisafe, CareZone and Mango Health. All these competitor’s product aim to be a pill reminder but they all have different visions on the features that should be proposed to the users.
Medisafe clearly stands out in the market. As compared to other, it focuses on its main goal which is to be a pill reminder. Its solution is very straight to the point, no extra features and even though the drug database is for USA crowd, it can be easily used by worldwide users.
Another point that came out from the competitive analysis is that, strangely, any overview or data visualization is quite profile oriented. When it comes to a pill reminder app, everyone would want to add many patients to the list of drug recipients: like a parent would want to be able to add its children. But on a daily overview of upcoming intakes, none of the competitors propose that feature where all intakes, for all recipients can be seen.
So is it a mistake from their side? Or is there a reason for that?
Our solution could focus on users that are in charge of many dependents and have a need to see quickly all those intakes, without having to switch from dependent’s profile to dependent’s profile. That could give a competitive advantage.
User inquiry support material
As explained earlier, this version of the design process will solely be based on the persona hypothesis. To prepare as best as possible a future version based on user research, I have prepared support material such as behavioral variables and drafted alongside, interview questions. These documents will help in understanding the users’ behaviors, goals, motivations, and frustrations once completed with user research.
As for now, persona hypothesis will be developed and design will be based on it.
Finding what causes medication non-adherence during the background research helped in shaping the behavioral variables. In addition, to understand where a user stands in the spectrum of non-adherence causes, the behavioral variables show the level of ease users might have in using the proposed solution (medication reminder) and the knowledge they have about the competitors’ products.
The behavioral variables will become the basis of the persona hypothesis (or proto persona). With actual user research, we could see behavior patterns coming up and define our personas.
The interview questions are based on the behavioral variables and are meant to gather data on users’ goals, motivations, frustrations, habits etc.
Market research (not performed for this document) could be used to select an appropriate range of interviewee in order to get sufficient data and see emerge significant behavior patterns.
The interview questions are more of a guideline, more like a topic related set of topics to follow. As the topics might evolve in the course of the interviews, the researcher should not be restricted to religiously follow this list, but it should mostly cover the conveyed concerns.
2. Modeling
Context of use
Proto-persona
From our research support material, we can anticipate what our primary persona would be (proto-persona or persona hypothesis).
3. Requirements definition
Problem statement
Medication nonadherence is a growing concern to healthcare systems.
To date, measurement of patient medication adherence and use of interventions to improve adherence are rare in routine clinical practice.
Vision statement
Overcome the identified difficulties that prevent following a medication plan with the use of digital devices. Smartphones are widely used and it makes the perfect tool to get a reminder. Smartwatches could also be considered as complementing, but in this version, it will not be used.
Requirements
Context scenarios
4. Design framework
Information architecture
A simplified-type-of data model helped as a reference to get a clear picture of the relationships between the data objects (their role and how they relate to each other).
Task flows helped refine the sitemap and they prepared the ground for the wireframes, especially accompanied by low-fidelity sketches and navigation. Later, the hamburger menu was changed to a bottom navigation menu as there were only a few important links.
The simplified data model and task flows helped to find anomalies in the product’s navigation and complete the sitemap.
5. Detailed design
Wireframes
Mockups
Thank you for reading!
I am looking forward for your comments.
