World Record allows our users to have their medical records on them at all times with the records translated to any language around the world.
The Problem
When traveling abroad, people tend to plan ahead: create itineraries, book hotels, and make reservations.
However, people rarely plan for getting sick when abroad. Without their medical records on file and an added language barrier to overcome, most people are stuck in dire need of help.
“How can I communicate my allergies to common cold medicine?”
“How do I translate my chronic condition to the medical staff?”
Be it something as common as food allergies, or something as potentially life threatening as diabetes, there is a need for people to have their medical records on them while traveling, as well as translated to the language of their destination.
User & Audience
The target users of World Record are travelers with pre-existing health conditions. This group is dependent on a well documented medical history that can be conveyed to medical practitioners reliably when receiving treatment.
Our Team
Our team comprised of 4 computer science students at the University of Washington. Abdalla Elaameir was responsible for designing our physical device. Ahmad Al-bassyiouni conducted the user research and analysis. Kevin Lee designed the application UI. Randy Yiv was in charge of prototyping and user testing.
User Research
For our research we drafted a script of questions and scenarios, and conducted interviews with people within our target group. Naturally, we interviewed people that we were not close with in order to prevent biased answers. To gather perspectives from a multitude of backgrounds, our users consisted of a female college student, a male college student, and an elderly woman.
As we sought to understand the obstacles in the way of travelers with medical conditions and specific medical histories, we noticed that the collected responses amongst interviewees shared common themes. Our interviewees all faced the following obstacles:
- Communication issues through language barriers
- Unfamiliarity with foreign medical practices & procedures
- Having little to no idea as to what to do in a medical emergency when abroad
From our interviews, we gathered a variety of different feedback, but for the scope of this course we narrowed down our user’s need and focused on these two tasks:
1. A way to have medical records on the person at all times
2. The ability to communicate medical verbiage in a foreign language
Prototypes & User Testing
From initial sketches and storyboarding, we decided on a computer interface to display the medical records. This interface is stored on a USB drive that is concealed within a form of a necklace, and secured through biometric fingerprint scanning. Thus, our initial paper prototypes were created.
Note that we focused on the form of a necklace in order to create a singular design for the scope of this class. Of course, our application can be encapsulated in other mediums such as a bracelet or watch, and take advantage of other data storage options such as micro USB/SD. (refer to Project Retrospect below)
We conducted heuristic evaluations with our prototype. The main heuristics that were highlighted in our evaluation were User Control & Freedom and Help & Documentation. Our original paper prototype did not allow for the user to freely move around the interface, and did not provide documentation on how to navigate around the design. Through heuristic evaluations, we revised this prototype. We focused on refining the interface, as our testers did not raise any issues with the physical necklace form.
Next, we continued to refine our prototype with user testing. We allowed the user to navigate and explore our interface on their own, and we would simulate the interface by manually showing new views as the user tapped the buttons. We assessed this testing through how easy it was for the user to use our interface (scale of 1–10), as well as how intuitive our system was (how many times the user had to ask for help). With these results, we made adjustments to our prototype.
From this revised paper prototype, our team created a final digital prototype for our design.
Project Retrospect
Throughout this design process, we learned a lot about how people deal with illness abroad and the struggles that people face when communicating in a foreign language. We also realized how important it is for people to have their medical records on them at all times as a way to communicate their conditions. From our user testing, we learned common tendencies that users had when approaching a new design for the first time.
We had many ideas that we wanted to include with our design, but were constrained by the timeline of this course.
The main feature we wanted to implement was a way to sync our device with a mobile companion app. Through self-reflection as a team, we realized during the prototyping stages that it would be very convenient for the user to have access to their medical records on their smartphone, rather than having to plug the device into a computer to view them. However, by this point we did not have enough time to include this solution within the scope of the course.
We also wanted to include a feature that allows for instant communication with the primary doctor, to ask about procedures and protocols before receiving care. Again, we did not have enough time to complete this task within the given timeline.
With regard to the physical form of our design, we want to give the user a variety of options. We were interested in making a bracelet to encapsulate the USB drive, or even a micro USB embedded in the form of a credit card, to store in a wallet.
We hope to address these features given the chance to build upon this project.
As a takeaway, we strongly believe that our design can help millions of travelers abroad in breaking through the language barrier when receiving foreign medical care.
