Device Assist

"you are a master story teller"

- Hayden Peters, Experience Designer and Academy Xi Tutor

Context: Medical devices in the form of Insulin Pump Therapy (IPT) and Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) have a significant impact on the management and clinical outcomes of Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) however there are many issues that people face when trying to access this technology and it is this that I will be addressing in my project. This was my first UX project which I completed as my solo project whilst attending Academy Xi.

Time Frame: 6 Weeks, July-August 2022

Contribution: Solo project end to end

Device Assist can reduce the time it takes to order Insulin Pump Therapy from 30 minutes or more, down to 5 minutes. Meaning more time for Diabetes Education and less time for Administration.

Discover

I started this project off with a wide range of research. I had much experience in this area resulting in prior contextual research so I wanted to spend this time digging further than what could be seen inside of the hospital setting. I started by conducting a competitive analysis of device companies and industry bodies. This was followed up by a FaceBook Deep Dive into Insulin Pump Therapy groups, followed by white paper analysis. This formed the foundations of my research before moving to surveys, online polls and then to one on one interviews.

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What's The Problem?

My initial problem focused on the difficulties from the side of those living with Type 1 Diabetes, I quickly realised I needed to pivot to focus on the diabetes educators. I came to the conclusion that:

A Diabetes Educator who feels confused about what paperwork needs to be filled out needs a simple way to find and complete all essential parts in a quick and efficient manner but faces too many stakeholders involved in the process, too many websites and a lack of clear instructions.

Define

All the research was then synthesised in an affinity map

Pain Points:

- My Diabetes Educator made it easy/fixed it/saved the day was the most common theme coming from those living with T1D.

- Patients also had common complaints around communication and transparency from the device companies, as well as the quality and/or quantity of support they received from those companies.

- For the Diabetes educators it became abundantly clear in this map that the paperwork surrounding these devices was the crux of their issues.

My persona & Understanding her pain

After creating an empathy map around this problem I found my persona Nicky and then created a Customer Journey Map to fully understand where these issues started in the process for her.

The biggest pain point for Nicky is around how much paperwork she needs to complete for one patient to go onto insulin pump therapy, how hard it is to find the right paperwork and how confusing that paperwork is.

Here we can see the actual paper work Nicky would need to deal with in this situation.

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Develop

I started postulating some how might we questions and took the top questions into an ideation workshop and laughed along with 5 Nicky's as they shared their crazy 8's and some seemingly equally crazy ideas. These ideas were moved to an MVP matrix, after which the user flow was developed and a quick story board.

Deliver

Moving from low to mid to high fidelity prototypes I conducted usability testing to continuously iterate.

This stage consisted of:

Six Iterations
13 Usability Tests
90% would use the platform over the traditional method
6/7 found if very easy to complete
5 minutes was the average time it took them to complete versus 30+ minutes from the usual method.

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What's next?

Health Professional Dashboard

A vital part to making Nicky's journey seamless is to provide her with a dashboard. Here she will be able to view all current and past orders to track these quickly.

Reminders and Notifications

The research showed that patients could be much better prepared for their appointments, again smoothing the process out. Providing the ability to choose reminders to set for patients and DE's alike will ensure all moves ahead smoothly.

External Stakeholder Discussions

By decreasing errors, speeding up process times and improving efficiency, device assist can improve patient experience and retention and speed up the sales process. With many more areas to expand the site to this will be an exciting journey for those looking to increase revenue and customer happiness.