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Uppermed Peritoneal Dialysis APP
Project length
6 / 2020 - 8 / 2020 (2 months)
Impact
Who I work with
Startup CEO, developer
PD patients manage their body data anywhere and anytime and enhance their happiness while performing dialysis.
About
A startup helping peritoneal dialysis patients have a normal life by providing an easier way to perform daily exchanges. Total solutions includes a hardware and an App.
Skill
User research (primary, secondary research)
Prototype
Visual design
Design process
Discover
Goal
Design an App to help Peritoneal Dialysis (PD) patients have better control of the dialysis process via data recording and trend analysis.
Background
Over 1,000,000 kidney failure patients are found to be depressed. UpperMed’s solution, PD care, will help PD patients to solve their daily challenge. In order to better track their treatment journey, PD care APP can record body liquid balance, blood pressure and body weight. Patients with a smart phone can use our APP to download the data and manage their health with the member of the family and physicians.Peritoneal dialysis(PD) patients Uppermed created a portable device for Peritoneal Dialysis patients to self-dialysis everywhere and anytime.
Problem statement
1
Traditional treatment
PD is driven by gravity, by hanging 2kg dialysis bag at a higher place. Being away from home, it is very challenging to find a friendly place which is clean to do dialysis.
2
Manually writing down the body data, wasting time and annoying
PD patients need to record their inflow volume and outflow volume manually by themselves on paper 4 times a day. It is time wasting and hard to track the data.
Solution
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Portable PD care, users can do treatment anywhere
APP to record and track body data and treatment progress
Business model
Charge customers directly with subscription model (charge per month). Approach customers through doctor.
Define
Understand PD patients' pain point and doctor's need
Interviewing over 20 Peritoneal Dialysis patients from age 35 to 60, we discovered two main problems and developed a persona below. Most of them already started dialysis from 10 years ago. They wish to have a life like normal people to keep working and traveling.
Insight
Patients
Patients want a more time saving exchange process.
Would like to do treatment anywhere.
Doctor
Monitor patients efficiently and less labour-intensive
Shorten the visit time of each patient
Personas
(Image for demo)
Peter, 40, a manager in a semi-conductor company
Continuous Ambulatory Peritoneal Dialysis treatment for 5 years. I exchange body fluids in the office bathroom, in the car or a meeting room without people.
Painpoint:
I feel annoyed that every time I exchange the body fluid I need to record the time and the fluid volume manually. And if I'm too busy, I might ignore the abnormal value I had.
Need:
I wish someone could help me check my abnormal value so that I don't need to calculate by myself, and also remind me to make a return visit to the hospital in my busy life.
The purpose of this product
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Patients do self treatment at home
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Easy communication between doctors and patients
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Help doctors tracking patients progress easily
Clear way to show important information after syncing up data from self-treatment machine
Abnormal value reminding：
explain the reason and contact way to the doctor or nu
Tracking the patients' improvement progress
Remind the patients returning checking
Learn from other competitors
Insight
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Graph to show the specific time, and can check the details.
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Show the most important value for the data: the average, the total (depends on the item)
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Patients can remark the in the data
Develop
Ideation for dashboard
Patients need to measure 2 times for pressure, two times for weight and 4 times for CAPD.
Rack design
The good side user can see all info at a glance
Infos will be too long that users have to scroll down
Carousel design
The interface is clean
Users have to scroll four times if the data has four piece
Two-later design
User can see the important value only
Users can see further details on the second page
Base on previous user's insights, they only want to see the important info and it's good to navigate and save their time.
High-fidelity wireframe
Deliver
UI detail page
Easily track and record the body condition
Problem solved
"After exchanging the body fluid with a device, the app will sync up the data with the device via BlueTooth. I want to view my body condition, and edit some data by myself such as my body fluid color."
Import data from device
View the data
Edit the data
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(Value detail page)
1
Select a date picker here to view the different date's dashboard.
2
Show the most important value on the dashboard. Users can navigate to specific value pages from here.
3
Show the most important functions on the tab so that users can find easily.
Abnormal value reminder for patients
Problem solved
"I would like to track back my past CAPD value and see my past data in a trend to see if my body improved."
Go to trend
Check another time period trend
View my trend
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With the tab bar, it's easy to see where they are now and switch to different item's trend.
2
Change to different periods easily to view other trends.
3
After clicking note icon, there is a modal popup showing the note details on the same page. It makes it easy to view the note taken on that day and it's useful for patients to communicate with the doctors.
Abnormal value reminder for patients
Problem solved
"I would like to someone to remind me about my abnormal value while I'm too busy to forgot the check and calculate them."
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Warning icon to remind the patients about the abnormal value.
2
Clicking the red circle will show the details of the abnormal value.
Reminder for return visit to the hospital
Problem solved
"I would like someone to remind me to return visit the hospital on time."
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2
1
A notification on the dashboard to remind patients they have an upcoming event, in order to make patient's busy life easier.
2
Clicking "check my appointment" will lead to my appointment detail page, where patients can edit the note.
UI and Illustration ideation
This takes reference from humaaans.com. This lively and flexible style really suits uppermed. We want to promote a relaxing and healthy lifestyle, so we apply blue and green colours, and plants to be the main illustration.
Patients meet with doctor scenario
Flower blooming represents the hope and life.
Illustration icon
Icons with colour spot makes it easy to recognise, and has a lively style to it too.
Plant illustration
Adding texture to the grass makes it into a rich looking and multilevel design.
Iteration after usability test
A total tests were performed on 10 patients. In addition to operational problems, we also found issues on operational problems, we also found issues on patients’ concerns. For example, the blood tests that patients need to have every three months often require a lot of paper records. Some patients also expressed a desire to be able to understand the normal range of each body data without having to go through a thick manual. Their requests give us a better understanding of the needs of the peritoneal dialysis population.
1
Improvement from aiming easy to communicate with doctor and nurse, easy to navigate, easy for non-tech users
1.Today for the title of this page is not that flexible in stead of using general title like My dashboard.
2.Too many icons for non tech people are not easy to use at the first time.
3.Too many action on the main page.
4.Interaction is not that user- friendly.
5.Too many information on one page, users are hard to digest and find the useful information.
(Before)
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(After)
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When the user is already on the detailed page, they usually cannot think to go back to the dashboard to add data.
(Before)
(After)
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3
Add a text size adjusting function
Users age varied from 30 - 80, it's will be more accessible to all users with the font size adjusting function by their need.
Challenge
This project required cooperating with a startup doing a hardware and software product and I'm responsible for the App design. The challenging part is verifying the Bluetooth connection with the hardware device and the App because of the slow implementation of the device. Therefore we tried to focus on the App and get user feedback via interviews and usability tests with patients. This App will also help this startup to get funding by showing good test results from the patients and doctors. The most interesting part is to transform the complex paper note-taking method into a digital one with simple input and output communication.
Results and next step
10/10 of patients think the concept is successful and help their life easier while doing dialysis treatment.
7/10 of patients think it's good to quickly see their today results on dashboard .
5/5 of doctor and nurses provide positive feedback will help them remind patients to return visit the hospital. It reduces labor from hopistal.
In the future, there might be a version for Hemodialysis patients and a specific online market function for Kidney disease patients to purchase their medicine and supplies, as well as a function to add partners so they will feel less lonely doing treatments and allow data to be tracked by family.
Lessons learned
It is a project through which I understand more about Peritoneal Dialysis patients. Their life is so inconvenient because of doing Continuous Ambulatory Peritoneal Dialysis. They need to exchange body fluid four times a day. I developed empathy to put myself in their shoes. This App is to help them reduce the pain for an inconvenience in daily life such as recording the body condition on paper. Therefore, they can live happily and like normal people with Uppermed.
I joined the project starting with the interview, usability test with patients. I cooperated with a CEO in a tech start-up, to think from a business and product perspective. I enjoyed this project by transforming the user's pain point into an innovative and workable solution that is satisfying for the users.
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