Week 5: Service Experiment
Service Experiment
This week we narrowed in on the concept of using a storybook to help parents collect data about their child’s daily symptoms in a way that will help inform a doctor’s asthma management plan. In an effort to focus in on particular touchpoints, we realized that there are 3 main moments in our service experience: at the doctor’s office, during a daily story time, and during an asthma attack. While each of these moments are interconnected in our service concept, they each have a particular purpose which will drive the touch points we develop.
During a doctor’s appointment when an asthma diagnosis is given, the primary objective is to educate the parent (and child) on what asthma is, how to properly take an inhaler, how to follow the initial plan, and track symptoms in our storybook.
The primary objective of the storybook is to create a new daily routine for parents and children to discuss and record their daily asthma symptoms, with the goal of collecting meaningful data for the doctor AND continuing to educate parents and children on how to manage their symptoms.
During an asthma attack, the goal would be to use an element of the storybook to help calm a child down and collect data on the event and medications administered.
The aspect of the service we had the most questions about was the feasibility of being able to collect meaningful data from a parent and child at the end of each day through a storybook. Would children 4–6 years old be able to recall events during their day? Would they be able to recall their emotional state? Can 4–6 year olds accurately (enough) remember the sequence of events from their day?
In order to test this, we decided to conduct a service experiment with a low fidelity storybook/worksheet to assess 4–6 year olds ability to:
- Sequence events from their day
- Report emotional states from their day
- Call out when certain activities happened within the sequence of their day
We knew that we could not get access to 4–6 year olds with asthma, but may be able to recruit kids to participate in short activity at a local playground. Given that these children would not necessarily have asthma we decided to focus our prototype on teeth brushing, which we thought was an appropriate analogous test because teeth brushing is something that all children do daily and is connected to their long term health.
During class we brainstormed a rough prototype for how we could ask children about their day and then identify the times when they brushed their teeth. We settled on a unfolding storybook/worksheet with three prompts that asked children about their day. Given that the children’s drawing abilities were unknown, we decided to use stickers as a way for children to indicate their daily activities.
We then mocked up a higher fidelity prototype and created colorful activity stickers to accompany the worksheet. With the hopes that we may get to interview parents after children finished activity, we also created a coloring page, using back and white versions of the sticker icons we created, to help keep children entertained while we talked with parents.
For the prototyping session we set up on a picnic table at the Frick Park Playground and posted a sign indicating that there was a sticker activity for 4–6 year olds. We were lucky that the park was very busy that day, and parents and children came up nearly immediately and asked if they could participate. We explained the purpose of the activity and its connection to our research (to parents) and then jumped into it. Once a few kids started doing the activity, it piqued the interest of others on the playground who came over and asked to participate. We had 10–12 kids from ages 4 -11 years old participate in total. The children were eager and excited to participate and many wanted to keep the worksheets. Nearly every child also came back to the table voluntarily a second time to complete the coloring activity, which gave us a good opportunity to ask them some more open ended questions. As a thank you, we offered a choice of stickers to all kids that completed a worksheet.
Our key takeaways from the activity are summarized below:
- Kids love stickers and coloring
- This sort of activity can engage kids from 4–11 years old
- Focus was able to be maintained fairly easily throughout the duration of the activity (10–30min)
- For younger kids (4–5 years), unaided recall and sequencing was challenging. However, when prompted and guided by an adult, they were able to remember their day with seeming accuracy
- Kids frequently recalled activities such as tooth brushing, putting their clothes/pajamas on, screen time, play time… however, they often forgot eating times, especially lunch
- There sense of time is unique. When they focused on certain parts of the day or chunk of events (eg: getting up, putting on clothes, brushing teeth), those activities eclipsed other parts of the day
- The activity seemed to work best when a parent was helping prompt the child and/or fact check their responses
- Coloring was a very calming activity that kids were able to do unaided and enjoyed for an extended period of time
- Stickers are a big hit, and motivator to complete an activity
After completing this service experiment we feel reasonably confident that we would be able to engage 4–6 year olds (and even older) in activity that could collected meaningful information about their day through a “storybook.” However, this activity also emphasized that this form of data collection is most effective when it is done in collaboration with a parent.
Researching analogous services & possible touch points
This week we also explored a number of existing health-care related symptom tracking apps, parent-baby breastfeeding and sleeping apps, meditation & relaxation apps aimed at children, and a few “smart inhaler” devices. This research helped ground us in the current consumer-facing paradigms for collecting and visualizing medical related data. These apps also helped seed ideas for touchpoints we may develop as part of our system.
- Symptom/event tracking apps
- Child meditation/relaxation apps
- Smart inhalers (and data viz examples)
Accessing parents via Amazon reviews
While we have been able to speak to a number parents of 4–6 year olds (mostly thanks to Raelynn!), we have struggled to get access to parents with asthmatic children, so we decided to get a little creative. In our secondary research into educational storybooks for kids, we realized that there are a few asthma storybooks in existence. While exploring these books on Amazon, we noticed that parents left extensive reviews of the books and often included anecdotes on how these books impacted their children's experience with asthma. There were numerous stories about how parents would use these books to calm their children down during an attack and keep them entertained with they had to sit at take their medicine. Parents also shared how the books helped make the concept of asthma accessible to their children and quell their fears.
This feedback was validating to the approach we are taking with our service, but has also made us think more deeply about not just the storybook, but a touchpoint that can help calm or entertain a child during an attack.
We also ordered a few other the books to use as references as we go to develop our own asthma story.
A sample of Amazon reviews:
“Our five year old son was diagnosed with Reactive Airway Disease at two years of age. Since then he has needed treatments with a nebulizer almost every day. Putting the required mask on his face had become quite a battle and made taking his treatments that much worse. Then we discovered The Lion Who Had Asthma. Our little boy responded instantly to Sean who is the main character in this book. The idea to treat the mask from his machine as the mask to a jet fighter plane was ingenious. Now we read this book during his treatments and using the nebulizer has become less of a struggle.
Now to get the author to write a book about taking medicine”
“Great, imaginative book that engaged my toddler with its beautiful illustrations, imaginative storyline, and connection to his own experience of asthma. If you are looking for help getting your child to use a nebulizer, this story of a boy pretending to fly a jet during his treatment may help.”
“It never occurred to me to find a book to help her cope and deal with the fear she might be experiencing until someone suggested it to me. I searched Amazon and found this cute book about Sean. It was perfect. It is simply written so, at her young age, she can understands the content. She relates to Sean coughing when he plays, having to do his nebulizer treatments, and how scared he feels when he is having an attack. But then, Sean feels better after his therapy and goes off happy and playing again. My daughter loves looking at this book when we are doing her nebulizer treatments at bedtime. I think it has helped her grasp the concept that she is not the only one that experiences this since nobody in our house has asthma except for her. I really appreciate this book and I thank the writer for creating it!”
“My daughter had a different view of the required breathing treatments after reading this book.”
“[My son] really enjoys this book, and it has helped us talk to him about his breathing. Sometimes we ask him if he feels like the lion or if the lion is scared. It also seems to help when he doesn’t want to use his nebulizer.”
“We love this book. My son asks to read it all the time. Makes him feel normal seeing a book with a child using the nebulizer and inhaler like him. So glad to find this gem. Also when he doesn’t want to take his neb book shows a couple things he can pretend his mask is like a fire breathing dragon. Well worth it”
“This book uses easy-to-understand words describing an asthma attack and recovery period. The story and images, as shown from the perspective of the little boy with asthma, is sure to appeal your kids; my 4-year old has asked me to read it to him every day! The book is upbeat and educational, showing that kids with asthma can safely play sports and stay physically active. Highly recommend!”
