iDrop- Grow fast in the learning curve for patients with diabetes
⬇ Lee este artículo en español⬇
Diabetes is an illness that affects 422 million people around the world. However, there are a lot of myths around the issue:
Is it a sugar’s allergic? No
Is it a disease of the elderly? No
Do you have to take insulin? Depends on the diabetes type development.
What we do know is that diabetes is a routine disease. Nothing is left to improvisation.
“Your life is like a road trip, you can stop wherever you want, go back, go ahead… But Diabetes’ life is a train trip : you have to know the start point, the stops… all is planned in advance”
I decide to apply design thinking methodology to identify a step in this routine that could be improved, with the aim to facilitate the diabetes’ life patient.
Data sheet
Challenge: Improve wellbeing diabetes’ patients
Methodology: Design Thinking
💻 Software: Pen and paper | Notion | Dropbox | Figjam | Google docs | Octopus | Whimsical | Photoshop | Figma & Pitch
⏰ Duration: 15 days
Kick Off
I have 2 weeks to find and develop a solution that will make a real improvement in the lives of patients with diabetes. I need a structured planning of the tasks.
A roadmap is the ideal tool to plan the steps and adjust the duration of the task, in order to achieve our goal.
We need to know the disease in order to find a useful solution.
World Health Organization (WHO) defined diabetes as: “Diabetes is a chronic, metabolic disease characterized by elevated levels of blood glucose (or blood sugar)”
There are 3 types of diabetes, depending on how well the pancreas works to produce insulin. Insulin is the hormone that converts food into energy:
Diabetes type 1: The pancreas produces little or no insulin by itself.
Diabetes type 2: Pancreas produces insulin, but the body becomes resistant or doesn’t make enough insulin as it should.
Gestational diabetes: Appear during pregnancy. Usually, after childbirth, the condition goes away.
The picture below compares type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
I decided to focus my research in diabetes type 1.
The first point of approach will be a desk research through the main websites of associations, health organizations, hospitals… and interviews with health professionals, which will make me understand that diabetes is an extremely individual disease.
🎯 There are as many types of diabetes as there are diabetes patients
This point substantially complicates the research.
Although there are common parameters among diabetes typologies, each patient has a different .and complex response and needs. There is no homogeneity.
🎯 Each patient must know themselves deeply in order to provide the appropriate response to their own reality
These professionals guided us in understanding the factors to managing diabetes.
✔ Insulin. That hormone that the pancreas does not produce and must be administered externally. Always used to correct hyperglycemia, which is high blood sugar levels.
These hyperglycemias occur for various reasons, but there is one constant: meals raise the glycemic index. This is why insulin doses must be synchronized with the amount of carbs consumed.
✔ Exercise is another influencing factor; moderate physical activity lowers blood sugar, while intense activities such as strength exercises or intense cardio raise it.
✔ Emotions also have an impact. Situations of stress, anxiety… can lead to situations in which glycemic index control may be challenging.
✔ Sensor is a device for measuring blood glucose levels. Indicates normoglycemia, values above or below it, signaling situations of risk that need correction.
There are many aspects to consider, so to develop focused surveys and interviews that provide insights, I used a tool called the 360º perspective, modifying aspects to make it useful for my research. This way, I introduce the physical, age, social, and emotional parameters.
I conduct interviews to gather qualitative information from patients.
Jose Luis Vidal, CEO | 40 years with type 1 diabetes, with whom I focus on the technological evolution of the disease and perform a glucose meter test to increase empathy. Along with Adrian Espinosa, a drummer in rock bands | 15 years with type 1 diabetes, with whom we discuss the impact of the debut in his adolescence and normalization in the adult age.
The interview questions were mainly focused on three aspects:
🚩 Debut: How did you discover that you had diabetes? How did you feel about it? Did you know anything about the disease before your diagnosis? How has diabetes affected your daily life? What is your insulin therapy? Do you use a glucose monitoring system sensor?
👩🎓 Living with the disease now: What is your routine before leaving the house? How do you balance your insulin routine with your social life? Do you engage in sports regularly? Do you notice if stressful situations and nerves affect you? How do you plan nighttime outings?
📢 Communication: Do you believe that public institutions provide sufficient coverage for the disease? Have you ever heard the term ‘toxic positivity’? What do you think of it? Have you ever felt judged for what you eat? Where do you get information or inspiration for meal planning?
Interviews and surveys conducted provide very interesting verbatims that help me in understanding the future development of a solution.
The diabetes patient realizes how difficult beginning are.
🎯 The difficulty of assimilating so much information
More than 75% say they have had a major change in their lives since diabetes came into their lives.
With these two different user persona, a little child who has just made his debut and a veteran adult with diabetes, I can focus on living with the disease, in two different moments but inherit of living with diabetes.
To understand how it affects those who are ill, I develop an empathy map focused on the newcomer. This tool allows me to synthesize the user persona’s emotions, making a deep reflection on their needs and problems…
Creating a user’s journey, not for a single day, but developed over a lifetime, from childhood — the moment of diagnosis — to maturity with the disease, shows me the frustrations and the complexity of reaching a state of normalcy, only achievable through self-knowledge.
Thanks to research and its synthesis, we identify pain points that, organized in a relational map, allow us to have a 360-degree view and understand what the most important common point to resolve is.
This is how I find the question that will structure the solution.
📚 How may we facilitate the process of self-knowledge in people with diabetes?
By applying Artificial Intelligence, already present in the medical field, we can combine the knowledge of various professionals to create a conversational medical chat that guides in understanding the disease.
Using the MoSCoW task, I define the core of the application. The goal is to create an MVP (Minimun value that is scalable over time, and this tool allows us to identify the main functions and potential future features.
Color
The lack of insulin can lead to eye and kidney damage, so iDrop is designed with the needs of people with visual impairments in mind. Therefore, design an accessible app becomes a priority.
You can read the following article to learn more about the technicals applied to ensure accesibility:
To choose the color variations, I use the LCH color model, which provides similar perceived luminosity.
I aim for the triple A accessibility standard and a contrast ratio greater than 4.5, which ensures readability.
I choose a contrasting color combination that conveys the cheerful and youthful tone of the application. Blue is associated with the healthcare world, calmness, and trust. The color orange conveys energy, strength, and security.
Typography
iDrop is designed using two typefaces chosen for their readability and contrast:
Orbikular is a classic serif font designed by Cotype Foundry. It is characterized by a large x-height and high contrast.
Inclusive Sans is a typeface designed by Australian designer Olivia King. Its goal is to incorporate features that ensure readability for all users.
Foundations
I defined the line, space and rounders for control and documentation.
Icon Library
I develop an icon library, with size and fill variants.
Brand
I develop a remarkable, minimal brand that represent a conversation chat (the main feature of the app)
Information architecture
The wireframes, created in Balsamiq software, achieve in a quick way, manage ui interfaces, establishing hierarchies…
Atomic design
I design the components that will make up the final organisms, facilitating the management of interface elements and promoting visual coherence on the platform.
Visual Design
With these elements I’ve designed the solution: iDrop
On boarding
The experience begins with the on boarding, in a sequential process, the patient describes their condition in order to personalize the conversations and solutions offered by iDrop.
Guided conversations powered by IA
iDrop is a conversational powered by artificial intelligence, incorporating the knowledge of specialists related to diabetes: endocrinologists, nutritionists, psychologists, and therapists.
All the understanding of the disease in a single application.
iDrop achieve individualized responses by synchronized with sensors and glucose meter.
📍 Start a generic guided chat or select a topic
When we enter the application, we can start a chat, and we can do it in two different ways:
- General Chat — Initiate a chat simply to track progress, ask medical questions, etc.
- Diabetes-related Topics — Start a chat focused on a specific issue related to diabetes. This provides speed and specificity to the user.
📍 A diabetes chat
Start a guided conversation, an act of self-knowledge through writing, in which the user will analyze what is happening to them and why.
The data can be entered manually or through quick responses provided by the app.
This allows the learning curve os the patient progress quickly.
📍 Personal medical advice
When we finish the conversation, the application provides medical recommendations based on the patient’s own experience.
It offers a structured set of steps, tailored to the information provided to the application and the study it has conducted on the person with diabetes (data provided through synchronization and collected in the conversational chat).
However, these are just recommendations that the user can either accept or decline. Notifications can be configured to remind us of the steps to be taken.
The patient can access them at any time through the home screen.
📍Quick feeling review
Feelings are an influencing factor in diabetes, and with the choice of emotions and identifying their intensity, we go through an emotional analysis process.
Conclusions
According to the CB Insights report, 86% of healthcare service provider organizations use AI for early detection, drug development, etc. Using this type of technology to create personalized treatments that grow as the user evolves offers a real-time, robust response.
With 24/7 attention and the knowledge of a diverse group of specialists, who never converge on the same patient in a physical space at the same time.
This allows the person diagnosed with diabetes to more quickly understand their body and their own responses to the disease.
iDrop accelerates the learning curve of a complex and highly personal disease.
And accesible, to improve the experience for all users, removing the walls to provide equal acces.
