Personal Care Manager
The Challenge
For patients with chronic illness to understand and be motivated to follow their care pan in order for them to reduce hospital visits and improve their condition. The app keeps track of a patients health data and inform the patient of their progress and goals as well as sending the patients progress to a back end system for their care team. I worked as UI/UX designer on this project.
Design Thinking
We followed IBM Design Thinking methodologies which is focused at tackling complex problems with user centred design and working through the problems as a team of designers, project managers, developers, users, business analysts.
Research Results
During our research and user interviews we found that patients felt disconnected from their plan and care team. They had a lack of understanding of the instructions from the care manager. Hard transition period from hospital to home and a lack of motivation to change behaviour towards a healthy life. We went about solving these issue with an easy to use goal screen that tracks patients progress using clear visual indicators. We supported the patients through helpful and timely communication which could motivate them to build new healthy habits.
User Testing
User testing was key aspect of the process. Designing for highly specialised users such as patients with an illness, it is hard to guess what will work and what actions they might find difficult because of their illness, this really highlights the importance of design research. User interviews helped us find the real pain points of our users, validate our assumptions, and test the usability of our designs. We also had regular checkpoints with our stakeholders, developers and business analysts to share our research results to make sure our solutions were feasible and to improve them at each iteration and phases.
Onboarding
From repeated user testing the on boarding was an important part of the app to get right. This is where the app had to showcase the value to the user and to guide them through the set up of the app and how best they should use it. The app uses IBM watson Ai technologies to utilise a chat bot for this section of the app. The bot icon I designed reflect the idea that the bot is personable, friendly and informative.
Patients Goals
This patient goals section aimed to solve users problems to guide, inform and instruct them through their care plan. Patients enjoyed how clear this section is to read and quickly know what they have to do for the day. Users also were engaged in the gamification of trying to fill up the heart health icon to 100%.
Individual Patients Goals
The data visualisation helps the patient easily see their progress. As requested by our users data could be ingested by wearables and sync with our app.
The bot then helps by motivating and guiding the patient on the progress through messaging. This is a powerful method to motivate the patients.
How to encourage behaviour change.
When goals are going well and patients are on target it is important to congratulate the patient. This is another tool to motivate patients and help them change their behaviour in a way that is positive for them.
Configurable Patients Goals
The care manager can configure the plan for the users goals. Examples shown weight, exercise, blood pressure and liquids.
Wellness companion Ai bot
The purpose of the bot is to motivate and connect with the patient. To always be readily available to instruct and motivate but also know when to call for human help. We found the bot was really valuable for onboarding and to educate the user on their care plan. When designing the the bot character I created a persona which could then dictate the style. I designed several iterations of a combination of Watson brand and a light hearted emoji characters. It was important to distance ourselves from imagery that would seem inhuman or robotic.
Ai Bot Desires and Concerns
Desires to be the perfect wellness companion and to make living with a chronic condition easier by helping patient to follow care plan.
Is concerned about being intrusive and unhelpful.
