UX Design
Vision Coach: An app to help Diabetic Macular Edema sufferers
Introducing Vision Coach.
This project was a fast, lean product accelerator in which we ideated and prototyped a responsive WebApp for Diabetic Macular Edema (DME) sufferers, in 6 weeks.
Vision Coach is a prototype designed for patients suffering from Diabetic Macular Edema (DME). The app enabled patients to:
Book appointments and track treatment
Enter test results
Monitor the progress of managing their condition
Timeline
6 weeks
Background
There is a serious condition that some Diabetics can suffer from called Diabetic Macular Edema (DME), which causes degenerative eyesight in one or both eyes. Bayer pharmaceuticals had a drug and treatment course for DME and were providing it to many patients. However, there was an issue that needed to be resolved around the adherence to the treatment.
The treatment for DME was an injection into the patient's eye that needed to be administered every month. This treatment process was uncomfortable, stressful and meant that some patients would not carry on with the full treatment for the 12 month course.
Bayer pharmaceuticals came to Head with the intention of developing a digital solution to overcome the problem of patients not adhering to their treatment.
We ran this project as a 6 week product accelerator, using a lean startup methodology. Each sprint was 1 week long.
Sprint 0 (1 week) - Immersion
Discovery, ideation and insights workshop with the entire team.
Sprint 1 - 4 (1 week sprints)
We worked in 1 week sprints using a rapid workflow to sketch, design and build each user story according to the product backlog defined in the immersion sprint.
I was responsible for leading the product team in keeping in-line with the project vision and taking into account insights that had been discovered through immersion, as well as applying behaviour change principles and defining the UI and flows of the product through sketching, user flows and storyboards. I led sprint reviews and was the main point of contact with the product owner in discussing the rationale behind design decisions and ongoing product strategy.
Sprint 5 - Hardening
The hardening sprint was used to complete the prototype ready for user testing. Due to the global nature of Bayer's business, they already had signed-off research partner to user test the prototype, so we did not carry this out.
When trying to fundamentally change a user's behaviour using design we can apply psychological principles to enable us to design a persuasive experience that will form habits.
On this project we used MINDSPACE, a set of psychological principles that we could apply to enable effective behaviour change in patients, therefore increasing their adherence to the treatment course.
At certain points within the journey we would introduce certain salient features that would have an impact in changing the behaviour of the patients, whether that be bringing them back into the app, or increasing motivation using a loss aversion exercise.
We completed a full Web App prototype within 6 weeks for Bayer's research partner to test in market in 2016.
I left the business shortly after completing the project so did not work on this again, however I heard that it performed very well and a full app launched onto the app store, which you can find here.