Reimagining medication adherence technology

CueMed

Project planning | Workshop facilitation | User research | Market research | Concept testing

Project overview

Among patients with chronic illness, approximately 50% do not take medications as prescribed. This poor adherence to medication leads to increased morbidity and death and is estimated to incur costs of approximately $100 billion per year.

CueMed is a digital health start up looking to help people manage & organize their medications and improve health by combining the power of technology with the empathy of real life coaches.  CueMed uses software and hardware components to help users with medication adherence.  I collaborated with two other collegues to conduct software and hardware concept testing for CueMed.

My role & contributions

My roles were Project Manager and UX Designer during this 3-week client project. I worked with and supported one Interaction Designer and one UX Researcher as well.

• I was in charge of project planning/management, client management, prioritization of tasks/time, visioning workshop facilitation, and Statement of Work. 

• I conducted a visual comparative analysis, created visual design artifacts, and led the client presentation. 

• I also assisted in hardware and software concept testing.

Determine project scope

We needed to learn about CueMed and understand how we could deliver optimal value to the business and its customers, given our three week timeline.. To accomplish this, I led the client kickoff meeting, defined the project scope, and created the Statement of Work.   

Statement of Work

Our client initially wanted us to conduct usability testing on hardware and software prototypes.  However, upon closer examination, we determined that CueMed's prototypes were not in a state to allow usability testing.  In addition, the prototypes were not designed or built with a target user type and specific user needs in mind.  

We needed to take a step back with the product and help CueMed lay a user-centered foundation as well as develop a business vision for CueMed moving forward. 

With the goal of providing as much value to our client as possible, we defined the scope of our project as follows:

1. Determine target user type

2. Develop a shared vision for CueMed

3. Ideate designs based on user research

4. Conduct concept testing on software and hardware

5. Iterate designs based on user feedback

Project planning

What is CueMed?

I led project planning, conducted a visual comparative analysis, and I facilitated a visioning workshop with the client to help them define what CueMed is and to get the team and stakeholders on the same page.

Visioning workshop

Visual comparative analysis

We wanted to look at competing company’s voice and tone, so I created a visual comparative analysis with seven competitors.  

Some key findings showed that scientific and educational tone was used if geared toward healthcare professionals and a more personable and friendly tone if geared toward end users, such as patients.  All color schemes included some hue of blue and/or green.

Understand and define primary users

After we defined what CueMed was and what they represented, we worked with our client to understand who their target users were. We leveraged existing research to help us define and build a primary persona to reference as we recruited participants for research and started thinking about design concepts.

Existing research

The client had worked with a researcher before coming to us with this project.  The previous researcher had collected a large breadth of data on users' medication routine and adherence.  Our researcher used this data in combination with our client's request to focus on users with hypertension and diabetes to determine our target user type.

• 35-65 years old

• Must have a chronic condition (HBP preferred; diabetes secondary)

• Take 3-5 medications daily

Persona development

Once we had determined our target user type, our researcher synthesized that information and created a primary persona.  She represented CueMed's primary user and we used her needs and pain points to inform our design decisions moving forward. 

Ideate designs

Using the user research and Nadia’s persona, our interaction designer created user flows and I created user stories of specific tasks Nadia would carry out while using CueMed’s product.  These flows included:

• adding a medication

• interacting with the software through medication reminders

• interacting with the hardware at home.  

Because current software designs were already in production but not ready for usability testing, we decided to focus on user flows and screen design for adding a medication and syncing with the hardware system.

Design studio

Using the user flow, we then moved forward with sketching out screen ideas. We did a design studio, where we gathered the entire team and rapidly sketched our different ideas for CueMed’s product. In this design studio, we primarily focused on sketching out screens for the “adding medication” task.

Wireframe flow

Our interaction designer took the screen sketches, expanded on them, and created digital wireframes to use in our concept testing.  We used these digital wireframes to construct a concept test with participants.

Created by Interaction Designer

Concept test overview

Part 1: User interviews
Elucidate behaviors, needs, and goals of participants by asking about medications, routines, and tools/strategies they use to organize and manage their medications.

Part 2:  Software screen flow
Show participants “Add Medication” screen flow, does it make sense, why or why not?

Part 3:  Hardware feature validation
Explore hardware feature validation, ask participants which feature would work best and why?

Part 1:  User interviews

To begin the concept testing, we asked broad, open-ended questions to elucidate the following qualitative data:

• Conditions, medications, routine

• Tools to manage medication organization & adherence

• Pain points/needs regarding medication

Key findings

• Our findings revealed that since our participants have chronic conditions, they have been forced over the years to develop strategies for organizing and managing their medications.  Interestingly, their method for organizing their medications, was also their mechanism for remembering to take their medication.

• These methods included original bottles being visible, weekly organizers, and some participants carried around pill pouches/keychains.  These strategies worked fine until certain pain points (see below) arose. 

• Even though these participants had developed systems for medication adherence, they all were interested in a tool that would help them with medication organization and management.

• Some pain points and user needs for CueMed to address in future product redesigns include:

  • Routine disruption

  • Changing time zones

  • Mobility/travel

  • Unsure if they took meds already

Part 2:  Software screen flow

For the second part of the test, we wanted to show the participants the screen layout and flow for adding a medication to the software.  We then asked them whether this made sense to them, why or why not. Their feedback gave us the basis for some design iterations.  Our interaction designer, Christine, took participant feedback and iterated on the screen designs.

Key findings

Created by Interaction Designer

Part 3:  Hardware feature validation

Per our client's request and to inform hardware design moving forward, we conducted feature validation for the hardware component design.  I created hardware prototype designs in Illustrator to validate features with participants.  These features included:

• Pill Organization

• Measuring Adherence

• Hardware Configuration

• Hardware Appearance

Key findings

Pill organization: Most participants preferred pill organizers over original pill bottles because with a pill organizer they can refill it once a week/month and not have to remember which pill to take when.
Measuring adherence: 5 out of 6 preferred the RFID sticker option over the weight sensor option.  Users worried that weight sensors might not be precise enough to measure small changes in weight.
Hardware configuration:  Half preferred modularity and the other half preferred 7-day pill organizers on hardware.
Hardware appearance: If using the original pill bottle, all users preferred the walled for stability. 

Considerations

• Consider designing a modular pill organizer

• Consider incorporating RFID technology or an alternate method that’s more reliable

• Consider portability as a feature

Potential hardware redesigns

We took our hardware test findings and I created potential hardware designs that addressed Nadia’s needs:  portability, weekly pill organizer (as opposed to original bottle), reminder feature (LED lights & module is empty, rather than counting pills from original bottle).  We gave these redesign ideas to our client for future design direction.

Key takeaways

Next steps

Reflection

My team was great at communicating and doing whatever it took to get things done.  As project manager, I felt as though I successfully planned and managed to produce valuable insight for our client.  Even though we were very unsure of our focus in the beginning of the project, I think we were able to adapt and complete a successful project through effective communication and collaboration.
Working with clients can be challenging.  They often know they want to implement UX design into their product but they aren’t exactly sure what that entails or how to go about doing it.  So communicating the value of user-centered research and design is absolutely crucial to get stakeholder buy-in and support.