INHALE - Asthma Management App
Inhale is an easy to use application wired to a smart inhaler that will help detect breaths within customizable frequency filters and intervals. The accompanying companion app helps parents monitor their child's everyday asthma usage while tracking their breathing efficiency (tidal volume) and setting up alerts when the medication needs replacement. By tracking their breathing efficiency with each use, the app also offers breathing practice to help users get better with using an inhaler if they are having problems. The goal is to never have to use your inhaler.
Project: Case Study
Role: Initiative, Design direction, UX research, UI design, Branding
Duration: Oct. 19’ - Jan. 20’
Tools: Adobe XD, Adobe Illustrator, Protopie
Problem
Asthma is a chronic, long term inflammatory disease that affects the airways of the lungs causing a variety of recurring symptoms such as shortness of breath, chest tightness, coughing and wheezing. Asthma can be aggravated by weather, pollution, food allergies and many other triggers. There is no permanent cure for asthma, but its symptoms can be managed and controlled with adherence to a proper treatment plan, changes in lifestyle and diet, taking necessary precautions and a copious amount of self management practices. Growing up, I have many relatives and friends struggling with health issues such as asthma. Seeing the sacrifices people have to make in their everyday lives just to live normally has inspired me to find a better design solution for this long-lasting problem.
01. Research
Interview with a Healthcare Professional and users
I wanted to gain a better understanding of asthma and the daily challenges that families face on an everyday basis. It was important for me to understand which issues to improve on. During the initial phases of my research on asthma and biometric monitoring, I talked to different parents, pharmacists, doctors and other involved parties to help me better understand asthma and the daily challenges children face. With the knowledge from preliminary investigation, I had the privilege to sit down and interview a Dr. Neena Makam, a pediatrician based in New York City. From Neena’s analysis and research, I was able to gather some insight about the current market for mobile smart devices and the implications asthma can cause if it is not treated properly. All of these interviews and talks, gave me a better insight on who I am designing for.
Key Findings:
Understanding the implications of living with asthma
A significant part of my design process is focused on ‘affective design’ which is concerned with subjective emotional relationships between users and products. I am very interested in designing for devices that changes behavior in the short term, and leads to a change in mindset and lifestyle in the long term.
Using an inhaler can be discouraging as it is very specific, has several confusing steps, and the breathing technique is often unusual and uncomfortable to the user. This results in users not knowing how to use these inhalers properly. Only 50% of asthma patients use the inhaler correctly.
02. Synthesis
user research findings
I created a PACT analysis that helped me get a better insight on asthma in general, and how a mobile application is best used to improve health behaviour changes. Despite the high risk of bias, such as selection, performance, and detection, through my research, I gathered that the use of mobile health applications has a positive impact on health-related behaviours and clinical health outcomes. Application users were more satisfied with using mobile health applications to manage their health in comparison to users of conventional care. Moreover, users were willing to share their personal data if it means improving their well being.
I identified two primary personas - a child ages 5 - 13 and a caretaker of a child asthma patient.
Design Principles
Based on the user research, I defined 3 design principles.
Design Concept
A companion app that designed for parents to help administer their child's health by tracking their breathing efficiency (tidal volume) with each use. If the child is having any problems, the app also offers breathing practice to help getting better with the inhaler while offering a detailed report to share with their doctor.
03. Design
Mid-fidelity Wireframe
After I developed the information architecture and user flow, I began to flesh out the wireframes for each of the tasks. At each and every stage of design I had to ensure that the microcopy, interface of the application should be easy for the user to comprehend and interact which will enable quicker task completions and adherence to treatment plan.
User Setup
Onboarding for Returning User
Returning User (Emergency)
I created this clickable prototype using Adobe Experience Design.
04. MVP Highlights
1. Dynamic User Onboarding
A simple and delightful user experience for first time users when pairing their inhaler with the app and creating their child's profile.
2. Quickly understand the app’s features
Information on different sections help users with get familiar to the different features that the app offers.
3. A better way to track a child's treatment
Compare weekly, monthly, and yearly usage with detailed reports, as well as the efficiency of each user. Tracking this data can help both parents and the doctors understand the severity of asthma better.
4. Emergency calls
Parents will get a notification in case a child gets an asthma attack outside of their watch.
Feel free to play with the interactive prototype!
This prototype is built in Protopie.
Reflection & Next Steps
User Research
I have learned to make the most of existing resources by trying my best to harness patients who have experience with asthma and gave compensation for their time out-of-pocket. The resulting personas was very helpful to keep me in check and avoid “designer biases”.
Design
I hope that this application will lead to long term results for children with asthma. Parents can finally have a peace of mind when monitoring their child’s health. Not only will they learn how to use an inhaler properly and understand how to keep this disease under control, but they will also have accurate statistics to show to their doctor when they have regular check ups.
Next Steps
The critical next step would be circulating the idea with a larger group of stakeholders, including child healthcare providers.