Taking the burden off of patients.

Letting a smart digital system create a dynamic, personalized medication regimen.
Student Project
Time Frame
4 months
Tools
Figma
Team
Elizabeth Waggoner
Bridget Halliday
Annie Zhao
My Contribution
User Research
UX/UI Design
Systems thinking
Usability methodology
3D modeling
Visual Design
problem

Patients find difficulty adhering to their medication regimens.

Extensive research and studies have revealed a startling statistic... along with its consequences.
so then...

How can we increase and encourage medication adherence?

the solution

Taking the burden off of patients, and letting a smart digital system create a dynamic medication regimen.

DailyDose, a mobile application that works in conjunction with a smart pill device to create a notification & scheduling system personalized to the patient.

Notifications at the right time and place.

Reminder to bring pill bottle if needed.
Location-based notifications.
Consistent follow-up if not taken.

Scheduled according to the patients’ typical routines.

A minimally disruptive mobile app.
Machine learning to gradually learn the users’ schedules.
Access to detailed and immediate information.

Quick and convenient way to take medication.

Smart pill case uses weight tracking to determine whether user has taken medicine.
Will display which medications need to be taken as well as the amount.
let’s rewind...how did we get here?
Express Scripts approached our class to act as overseers and collaborators.
What/who is Express Scripts? Express Scripts is a prescription benefit plan provider. Their goal is to make the use of prescription drugs safer and more affordable for their members.
They challenged our class to address the following problem statement...
‍

Patients find difficulty adhering to their medication regimens...

How can we create a product that would encourage medication adherence?

finding the root of the problem...

Why do patients struggle to adhere to their medication regimens?

Drawing insights from white paper research, I discovered something interesting...
...results of a study showed that 49.6% of patients mentioned forgetfulness as one of the major non-intentional reasons for non-adherence...
Keeping this in mind, we continued digging deeper into the problem with user interviews. Our team interviewed those with chronic illnesses, those taking multiple medications at once, and those working in the pharmaceutical industry.
synthesizing the user interview findings

The reasons for non-adherence can be categorized into 3 buckets:

Knowledge

Unexpected side effects
Undervaluing medicine
Stigmas
Denial of health issues
Lack of knowledge/education

Routine

Forgetfulness
Away from medication
Lack of routine consistency
Stigmas

Perception

Stigmas
Undervaluing medicine
Lack of advocacy for patient from the doctor
Benefits of medicine are not perceived
Based on our initial white paper research and the synthesis from the affinity mapping, we decided to tackle the problem space of the routine-driven reasons for non-adherence. Our team felt that this was the most feasible, as we uncovered evidence from studies that education about medication had not improved adherence.
narrowing our problem space with a guiding question:

How might we seamlessly incorporate a medication regimen into patients’ lifestyles?

ideating potential solutions

What features and capabilities would the ideal smart digital tool have?

We focused on a few different potential directions. As our peers, professor, and Express Scripts team helped us review the pros and cons of each, we landed on a smart digital tool that would learn the user’s routines and adapt their medication regimen accordingly.

To seamlessly incorporate a tool would mean to...

Designing with personas in mind
Here’s a snapshot of the two user personas we used:
improvements using Cognitive walkthrough

Improvements in the mobile app, notification system, and smart pill case design.

Due to time constraints, we were only able to do cognitive walkthroughs for usability. Ideally we would have fleshed designs with much more user testing.
Notif system improvements

Reminders in-advance

In case of abrupt change in schedule, users will be able to plan their medication intake timing in advance.

Urgent reminders

In case of unexpected outing or in the case of an unplanned day (in which the algorithm has not yet learned of), user will be notified to bring their pill case.
App will track location to verify outings.
mobile app improvements

Adding the schedule onto the home page

After walking through the personas’ user journeys and tasks, we determined the medication schedule for the day to be of priority information.

Prioritizing the right information

Based on how doctors prescribe medications, the consumption measurements are based on tablet number rather than mg.
I changed the UI to parallel this line of thinking.
smart pill case improvements

Auto dispense necessary medications

Reiterating the principle of seamless incorporation, minimizing the effort expended by the patient is our goal.

The smart case can auto dispense the exact medications necessary for the user at any given time.
Final design

Final mobile app designs

play

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