ROLE AND KEY TASKS

UX designer at INVIVO Communications

• User research and personas
• Hypothesis formulation
• Information architecture (IA) definition
• User flows and interaction design
• Created wireframes and lo-fidelity prototypes
• Functional specification documentation
• Organized team meetings and collaboration
• Client and stakeholder presentations
• Revised concepts to incorporate feedback
• Functional application testing

PROJECT TEAM

Novartis (client), account director, project manager, creative director, medical content writer, visual designers, technical lead, developers, quality assurance tester

AWARDS

• EyeforPharma award for the Most Valuable Patient Initiative
   
• MM&M finalist in the Best Health & Wellness Digital Initiative for Consumers category

• Novartis hoped to increase prescribing and adherence rates of their COPD treatments by developing patient support tools, such as Helio.
   
• With this project, they hoped to build an Android app for volunteer patients, and apply learnings from the study to future digital projects. 

• Due to the sensitive nature of this project, our team was unable to contact patients, but background research was provided from Novartis. Additionally, I also reviewed COPD forums online to gain a first-hand view of patient perspectives.
   
• After combining the research, I created personas to inform my design decisions and convey user needs to the team.

Research Insights for Helio:

• COPD is an incurable lung disease caused by long-term smoking or air pollution. Patients expressed guilt and frustration about their condition, which prevented them from living more enriched lives. 
   
• Patients felt it was difficult to communicate the severity and frequency of symptoms to physicians and caretakers.
   
• Patients wanted more empathy and continuous encouragement to maintain positive habits that would slow the effects of the disease, such as smoking less and exercising more.  

After conducting a review of similar mobile apps, we decided to combine two engagement techniques:

• Gamification with in-app achievements can help set good habits with new users, and improve monotonous tasks such as recording health data.
   
• Health insights (e.g. trends and visualizations) based on the data will be particularly valuable to patients taking preventative measures to manage their disease.
   
• Since gamification is not a feasible long-term solution, Helio needed to continuously provide useful health advice.

Designing Helio Check-Ins

• Novartis wanted patients to use daily Helio "Check-Ins" to track seven aspects of their health, such as smoking and exercise. 
   
• Since data entry can be a boring task, my goal was to design efficient Check-Ins that provided patients with a sense of accomplishment upon completion. I also hoped to incorporate some playfulness into the interactions.

• I used paper sketches for brainstorming visuals and gestures, and flow diagrams to determine Check-In steps. Concepts were tested with my team using wireframes and lo-fidelity prototypes.
   
• My solution consisted of Check-Ins as separate questions with image-based interactions to enter responses. Patients had the flexibility to complete Check-Ins throughout the day. 

Designing the Architecture

• Patients needed a way to view their health information in Helio after it had been collected with the Check-Ins. I designed Helio's sections to serve different purposes based on user tasks to review information, such as:
   
  • High-level information for personal progress and health insights
     
  • Granular health information from a specific time frame
     
  • Helio achievements

The Feed

• Helio's Feed home screen was organized into four scrolling time frames (today, yesterday, week, month), to help users see short and long-term progress.

• I felt that displaying quick pieces of dynamic information would be more valuable to the patient, rather than day-by-day details.

Snapshots

• In contrast, Snapshots contained all health data recorded in Helio. I used the same time frames as the Feed for consistency, but gave users the ability to view data from a specific time frame or date of their choosing.

Achievements

• Helio's reward system emphasized good habits to motivate patients. This section showed unlocked/locked achievements of varying levels and future challenges.

• Most patients felt that Helio had a positive impact on their lifestyle, giving them a better understanding of their daily behaviours and overall health.
   
• Some patients reported behaviour changes, including:
  • Smoking fewer cigarettes
  • Drinking more water
  • Recognizing the importance of physical activity
     
• Most patients made Helio a part of their daily routine, usually spending at least 2-5 minutes with the app.

• Helio’s design was described as: helpful, motivating, supportive, fresh, and fun.
   
• Half of the patients were interested in sharing information with their caretakers. They felt that caretakers would listen to their concerns more seriously since they had recorded data into Helio.
   
• Additional features and customization would encourage more patients to continue to use Helio past the 6-week period.

Our team created a list of improvements and new features based on the results from the study. We worked with Novartis to create a new app version, named Volari, which included some of these features:

• Allow patients to enter information for previous days instead of the current day only
   
• Add more flexibility to Check-In responses, such as specifying the intensity of exercise
   
• A wider variety of content, such as daily challenges and health tips