Care Chronicle

Healthcare Mobile Application

Project: Application design to improve how patients and providers collaborate to manage chronic disease. The app will initially focus on migraines. The intent of the app design is to be modular so it can be integration with other chronic diseases such as arthritis or epilepsy in the future.

Migraines are a poorly understood neurological condition that can include vascular and/or muscular pain. They are often undiagnosed and under treated. Migraines have many triggers such as weather, stress, sleep, hormones, diet and imbalances in serotonin.

Migraines can include visual impairment such as vertigo, blurry vision and seeing colors and patterns that shouldn’t be there. They can produce intense throbbing pain, nausea, sensitivity to light, sound, smells and last anywhere from 4 to 72 hours.

Our Client: Rowen Berry. She recently graduated with a masters degree in Healthcare Innovation and works in quality and process improvement at Health Partners, Park Nicollet. Rowen recognized gaps in communication between patients and care providers as they tried to collaboratively manage chronic disease.

She came to us with a vision for a medical application to solve this problem in the following ways:

• Create a tool to improve how patients and providers collaborate to manage chronic disease
• Improve communication between patient and provider
• Modular design which can be expanded to other chronic diseases

“This app will improve migraine management by transforming care plan communication via a single provider through an interactive platform for resources, recommendations and personal health data tracking. It is important that this tool be customized to the individual patient and integrated into their healthcare experience and provider relationship.” — Rowen Berry

“It needs to be loveable, fast, clean and not overly complicated” — Rowen Berry

Challenge: There are already a few mobile migraine apps on the market. Our challenge was to propose a better solution which was offer a better user experience and would have HealthPartners integration.

Approach:
This project began with a stakeholder interview to identify our client's goals and gain insight into chronic disease, migraines and the project.

Results: Our team gathering and synthesizing primary and secondary research, developed the information architecture and a rough site map to get started. We created feature cards, sketches, wireframes and ultimately an Axure prototype of the app.

Methods Used:

• Competitive Analysis with existing migraine mobile applications
• Surveys
• Diary Studies
• Interviews, Usability Testing and Directed Storytelling
• Mind Map
• Empathy Map
• Journey Map
• Rapid Prototyping: analog and digital
• Interactive Prototype made with Sketch and Axure RP
• Feature Card development
• Kano Analysis with primary users
• Annotated Wireframes

Tools Used: White Board, Paper, Pen & Pencil, Sketch, Axure RP,  Illustrator, Photoshop 

My role: UX Researcher and Strategist, UX Designer, Branding, Client Liaison

View our team's Care Chronicle Keynote Presentation (PDF)