Kidney Tracker
A medical application that can benefit the kidney disease space.
Created a patient centric, digital organizational tool to help manage kidney disease. Kidney patients have very complex needs and are constantly using different, unsynchronized products platforms for medical monitoring and informational gathering.
This application helps lower barriers by providing an all encompassing tool that would be a one stop shop.
MY CONTRIBUTIONS:
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Lead the team from brainstorming to conception of the prototype
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Organized and recruited participants for user interviews
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Storyboarded and filmed the video trailer
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Responsible for the branding and guidelines.
MY ROLE:
Project Lead, User Experience Designer,
Interaction Designer
DATE:
September - December 2020
A PATIENT VIEWpoint
I wrote this poem to signify the patient viewpoint of the challenges faced in the kidney disease space.
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Tick tock tick tock… the hand of the clock turns yet on another beat. Time can seem arbitrary but when weighted with value, it signifies the collection of important memories and goals to be made.
To realize the value of a YEAR, ask a person who is on the organ donor list awaiting a transplant.
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To realize the value of a MONTH, ask a person who is awaiting their first kidney specialist appointment.
To realize the value of a WEEK, ask the patient who receives dialysis treatment on a regular basis to clear the waste in their body as they wait for a kidney transplant.
To realize the value of a DAY, ask the patient who is booked to an oxygen tank, trying to accomplish the simple tasks of life without having to sit down every five minutes, exhausted.
To realize the value of an HOUR, ask the family that waits as their loved ones are in medical imaging receiving their biopsy to diagnose the stage of kidney failure.
To realize the value of a MINUTE, ask the person who just received news that their life is in danger and they may not live another day without dialysis or transplant.
Primary Interviews:
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11 kidney patients and 2 dialysis nurses were contacted. 6 of these participants were interviewed over the phone with a semi-structured interview style.
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7 participants answered our online questionnaire.
Synthesis
We synthesized the data using the infinity mapping method to group common themes together. We started with 15 themes and filtered down into 4 main categories (Communication, Management, Information Links and Monitoring).
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Themes:
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Advocates
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Community and Family Support
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Social
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Attitude
COMMUNICATION
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Treatment Type
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Management of Treatment
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Exercise
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Diet
MANAGEMENT
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Kidney failure
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When were they diagnosed
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Side effects/Medical complications
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Lifestyle changes
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Covid-19 changes
INFORMATION LINKS
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​Symptoms
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Monitoring process with medical team
MONITORING
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Key themes of kidney disease in all stages:
3. Documentation of vitals: like blood pressure and weight is important in all aspects of the journey. It’s most crucial in the end stage during dialysis treatments as this dictates how the treatment is to be setup.
1. Diet: is important in all
stages, maintenance,
prevention and overall
health.
2. Medications: are a vital in treating symptoms and managing health. Side effects from strong medications like steriods need to be monitored for long run usage.
4. Supportive medical team: is essential to the success of managing symptoms and alleviating communication barriers.
We made personas, empathy maps and as is scenarios to better gauge our user group needs to formulate 3 main "how might we statements" to guide our solution process. We chose three as there were many themes that we felt were important to cover in this complex space.
Objective: “Kidney disease, how can I manage you?”
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Need Statements:
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An intuitive and easily manipulated application for the patient that anticipates/creates data entries.
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A fast and efficient resource for patients to independently document and send medical information to the medical team from home.
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A method of communication between the medical team and patients that allows the medical team to check patient data live in real time.
Ideation
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We used the big vignettes method to explore ideas of the application widgets and used a prioritization grid to really hone in on the most needed features.
USER Testing
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We tested our first round of the low fidelity wireframes with 4 participants (1 nephrology pharmacist, two more kidney patients and a mother of a transplant recipient)
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"Medication feature is exactly what the patients need."
Pharmacist
"You cannot think straight: you run around everywhere, you can forget things."
Parent w/ Child Patient
"It’s basic, better. Not complicated, user friendly."
Kidney Patient using MyChart
Our final prototype showcased the second round of feedback adjustments for an additional of 3 different participants. (tech savvy kidney patient, social worker/patient, and a dialysis paediatric training nurse)
"I'd share with my patients."
Social Worker/ Kidney Patient
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Medication images are nice.
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Diet info is cool, videos would be nice.
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I'd put tax stuff, {..} good but add disclaimer, less headache in the future, with form filling it is important.
"I don't endorse communication in Mychart app, so many things to answer plus Mychart. nothing urgent."
Dialysis Paediatric Nurse Educator
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Make sure to have disclaimers.
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Review the medical history facts.
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This reminds me of mychart but your resource manual and diet are different.
"Intuitive, easy to go back and forth was able to find easily anything I looked for."
Tech Savvy Kidney Patient
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Trends: Very important. Must have tool.
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DNR form - I wouldn't have that.
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Side effects (3 pages long and more!!) actual info is much longer but you have the main ones here, it's straightforward.
FINAL PROTOTYPE
Changes we made:
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Pop-up screen after saving
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Disclaimers to pages
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Changed to the medical history section
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Updated Links to More
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Removal of DNR form
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Added tax forms
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New home icon to allow for better thumb handling and avoidance of multiple button presses.
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Doctor’s contact page info
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Email chat window to access offline messages to medical staff
Looking Back
The big challenges were extracting my personal experience from research. The best way to not influence answers was to allow other teammates to interview known participants. Also always referring to direct quotes of the participants to lead focus through facts.
Upon the first draft, with creating a patient-centric application, the business model around the actual clientele funding the ideal project was not as clear. As the patient-centric tool, was taken as a non-payment by the end user, it complicated and with further research in an entrepreneurial platform this would be addressed.
We showcased the need to centralize monitoring tools for kidney patients as a means to locate information quickly. This could make a big difference for patients who felt they did not have access to any current tool when they were navigating their health journeys.