Context

What does it mean to be a Type One Diabetic?

Our blood sugar is constantly changing. It goes up and down depending on what we eat, how we sleep, and our exercise patterns. When our blood sugar is high, the Pancreas naturally gives our body insulin to lower it. When our blood sugar is low, the Pancreas releases Glucagon to increase it.

Type One Diabetics (T1Ds) don’t have a fully functioning Pancreas so their bodies are not able to regulate their blood sugar naturally. This means they have to apply insulin manually to decrease their blood sugar and eat carbohydrates in order to increase it. If a T1D's blood sugar goes too high, they will go into ketoacidosis. If it goes too low, they will become hypoglycemic. Both scenarios can be lethal to T1Ds.

What’s the Follow App

Dexcom is a tool that allows T1D to track the current state of their blood sugar so that they know when to apply insulin or eat carbohydrates. The Dexcom Follow App is a satellite app allows friends, family members, and doctors related to also track and monitor current blood sugar status of their T1D friend, family member, or patient.

North Star

The focus for the exercise will be to improve user engagement and customer satisfaction for the Follow app.

User Personas

Core user

Type Three Diabetic (T3D): The partner, parent, or teachers, or close friend who assists with the day to day tasks of being a diabetic and are on-call in case of an emergency.

Other users

Friends: Like being in the loop. Should be notified if there are any issues.

Endocrinologist: Primary care doctor for the Type One. May need to check in if there’s an emergency and or give guidance if the Type One is currently experiencing issues.

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For the sake of this exercise, I'm going to focus on one user group. T3D users are the primary users, so it makes sense to focus on improving the Follow App for these users as a starting point.

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Use Cases

Persona: Jason the Father: Jason is 45 years old and lives in Portland, OR. He works as a construction project manager. He is married, and he and his wife have a daughter who is ten years old was was recently diagnosed as a Type One Diabetic. Jason needs to be able to:

Set, manage, and track blood sugar notifications so that he is notified when different issues take place and take the necessary action if/when needed.
See the current blood sugar for his daughter. If it’s trending up or down and how fast, and understand whether or not it’s in a good or a bad state so that he can pro-actively decide what to do next.
Review the blood sugar history for his child so that he can tell if his daughter needs to make any adjustments to her eating/sleeping/exercise habits.

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Use case number one, being notified and taking action when necessary, is the most important use case. I will focus on that one for this exercise. If I had more time, I would do the same analysis as below for each of the different use cases.

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Sub Cases

Set, manage, and track blood sugar notifications so that he is notified when different issues take place and take the necessary action if/when needed. These cases are not currently supported by the Follow App.

Urgent notification (phone call or text message) if the diabetic is at an extreme low needs to manually be given sugar and the ER needs to be contacted.
Urgent notification (phone call or text message) if the diabetic is at an extreme high and needs to manually be given insulin and the ER needs to be contacted.
General notification if diabetic is trending towards a low so they can get them food.
General notification if diabetic is trending towards a high so they remind them to take insulin.
Custom notifications for specific edge cases.

Problem Statements

How does the follow app solve for this use case? Design criteria (Simple, Useful).

Setting and managing notifications is difficult: Setting up notifications is arguably the most important use case for Follow App users. On the home screen, there’s no mention of setting notifications. Setting these up is generally difficult.
Notifications are not customizable: Lows and highs can affect T1Ds differently. The user can only set four types of notifications and there’s minimal customization for when they’re triggered.
Notification types are not sufficient: The user is only notified via push notification but cannot set up SMS or phone calls in the case of an emergency.
The necessary action I need to take isn’t clear: Blood sugar management is complicated. T3Ds like Jason may not understand what they need to do to help.

Solution

Redesigned, enhanced notification system that allows users to easily create, update, read, and delete custom notifications. Notifications can be sent via phone, text, or push and can be customized to give you guidance for how to act in a certain situation.

Setting and managing notifications is difficult: Easily create, manage, and notifications in a single place.
Notifications are not customizable: Customize notifications based on specific blood sugar circumstances.
Notification types are not sufficient: Allow for different types of notifications depending on severity.
The necessary action I need to take isn’t clear: Add specific recommendations that can be created by a doctor, T1D, or T3D user.