Disrupt Diabetes Challenge

Our incredible team

Timeline February - May 2018

My Contributions

• Project co-lead

• Conducted over 60 interviews

• Synthesis of research findings

• Design sprint

• Prototyping co-design activities

• Prototyping and implementing chatbot

• Visual communication

• Co-design and facilitation of workshops

• Co-author on publication of pilot study

Location Stanford University School of Medicine, California

Team

Colleen Clark (Design mentor)

Bill Sheppard (Patient expert)

Amanda Tu (Stanford undergraduate student)

Daniel DeSalvo, MD (Baylor College of Medicine)

Lina Vadlamani (Yale University School of Medicine)

Project Context

Disrupt Diabetes is a patient-led, multi-stakeholder design challenge. Teams consisted of a Stanford undergraduate student, a designer, and a Type 1 Diabetes patient. We collaborated remotely for 10 weeks then met in person for a day-long sprint at Stanford University School of Medicine. A physician and a medical student joined our team for the final pitch. As the design mentor on the team, my role was to facilitate the overall collaboration, guide conversation, and lead our design research strategy. I also contributed to conducting research when needed, but the undergraduate student served as the primary lead in conducting the research.

Doing affinity mapping remotely as a team to explore the needs of type 1 diabetes patients and define our project scope.

Initial sketch created by a team member of our final concept “Attain-in-Range”.

Insights

After conducting over 20 in-depth interviews with patients and providers as well as analysis of over 50 respondents to an online survey, our team identified the following five insights:

1. People with diabetes sometimes forgo exercise because they fear their sugar levels will drop too low and/or want to avoid the “mental overhead” of planning around a projected sugar drop. They seek a more predictable link between exercise and sugar levels.

2. Some people with diabetes seek a community around exercise for both accountability and support. It helps when this community comprises people who understand the unique needs and concerns of diabetes patients.

3. People with diabetes seek straightforward, uncomplicated workout routines that can fit into busy, variable schedules.

4. Many people with diabetes are looking for fun, engaging types of exercise, often with some kind of gamified component that can make working out less of a chore.

5. Sometimes, people with diabetes have negative experiences with exercise—both related and unrelated to diabetes—that can be discouraging. These can include: a bad experience with low blood sugar, shame as it relates to diabetes and going to the gym, boredom, etc.

Initial wireframe sketches created by a team mate during the day-long sprint.

Outcome

At the end of the day-long sprint and informed by our prior research, we pitched our final concept an app named “Attain-in-Range”. Attain In-Range allows users to track what effect different forms of exercise have on blood glucose levels.The app has a diverse range of pre-loaded fitness routines (both video and audio, of assorted lengths and intensity levels), along with the option to manually log exercise. The main features of the app are:

• Users log their pre- and post- blood glucose data: either manually or by syncing via a continuous glucose monitor (CGM)

• The platform tracks average BG pre- and post- workout for both the individual and aggregate community

• Data can be shared with friends, clinicians, and fitness trainers

Before exercising, users are encouraged to take a look at their own historical data as well as data from people similar to them to predict what how the exercise might impact your glucose levels. Hopefully this will prompt users to consider if the delta put them at risk for a low. If so, users can adjust accordingly before exercising, or pick another activity.