J E S SICA SMI TH
TABLE OF CONTENTS 6
ORIGIN STORY
7 RESEARCH 12 IDEATION 16
PROTOTYPING - PHYSICAL
18
PROTOTYPING - DIGITAL
24
USER TESTING
32 BRANDING 36
MOVING FORWARD
39
ABOUT ME
3
THANKS This project wouldn’t have been possible without the time and feedback of a number of people. Specifically, I’d like to thank Matthew Hoey and Henry Yoo, professors of the graduate ID Tech class at Pratt Institute. I’d also like to thank Keith Kirkland and Kevin Yoo of WearWorks for their insight into haptic devices, and Odette Shorer and Dana Schwimmer of Tom:NYC for their feedback on assistive devices. Also, thanks to all of my classmates in the MID program and students at Pratt who participated in the surveys and user testing portion of research -- that feedback was crucial in informing the design of this project. Thank you all!
5
the Origin Story The idea for this project began back in the fall of 2016. At the time, I was living in Providence, Rhode Island and working as a project manager for a remote digital design agency. We had a client in San Francisco that was wary of the whole remote work idea and so it fell to me to fly over to the west coast once a month to meet with them in person and assure them that yes, we were a real company doing real work for them, despite not having a physical office space. It was on these cross-country red-eye flights that I began routinely missing my birth control schedule. Either my medication would be difficult to access, in my overhead or checked luggage, or I would take it at the wrong time due to time zone changes. It got to the point where I just accepted that I could no longer rely on my oral birth control pills as effective since I was taking them on such an erratic schedule. Of course, life moved on and things changed. Donald J. Trump was elected President of the United States and I got an IUD that would last more than 4 years. I forgot all about my transcontinental birth control woes and focused on other things -- like applying to graduate school for industrial design. To my delight, I was accepted and enrolled in the Master’s of Industrial Design program at Pratt Institute. And it was in the first semester of our ID Tech class where I got the opportunity to solve this issue -- with the prompt of creating a container for a time sensitive object.
6
7
Medication Management User Research Study Personal Information Name:
Age:
Occupation:
Email:
Gender:
Questions 1. Do you take any medications on a regular basis (including vitamins)?
2. Is the effectiveness of your medication affected by your ability to take it on a consistent schedule?
3. Do you run into any factors that make it difficult to take medication on a regular schedule?
From here on out, when referring to a “medication manager” we mean a product (either physical, digital, or both) that helps organize and remind you to take your medications 4. Would you be interested in using a digital medication manager?
Y
N
Maybe
5. Would you be interested in using a physical medication manager?
Y
N
Maybe
6. (If you answered Yes to Question #5) Would you prefer a physical medication manager that was portable as a wearable object or a static object that remains in one location?
7. If you were to use a physical medication manager would you want it to have a storage area that allowed you to transport your medication?
8. If you were to use a wearable physical medication manager, what device or piece of jewelry would you prefer it be incorporated into?
Thank you for participating in this study! Your information will not be shared with any outside parties without your consent.
8
Research Coming off the Assistive Technology project just a few weeks prior, I knew one of the first things I needed to do if I was going to make a device that could be helpful to users was to gather research that could inform the needs my device would have to satisfy.
To the left is an unanswered copy of the survey I handed out to members of my class as well as other people around campus to gather information on what kind of medication management system would be most useful. I can’t share the exact answers I gathered since many of them contained sensitive medical information but I can share the list of takeaways I gleaned from the data:
1. Nonadherence is a real issue. All but two people who were interviewed reported having issues taking their medication on a regular schedule, with the majority of those people reporting a loss of efficacy of their medication when they do so. 2. The main wearable item people reported wanting to incorporate a physical medication manager into was a watch -- an idea I broadened to include any wrist-based accessory for this first round of rapid prototyping. 3. The second most reported physical item people reported wanting to include a medication manager into was a phone case. While I didn’t test out a phone-based storage system in this round of prototyping, moving forward I believe creating a modular storage system that could also be incorporated into a phone case would be a direction worth pursuing.
9
MARKET CONSIDERATIONS Needless to say, I am not the only woman who has had issues sticking to a regular schedule for birth control. A study published in the Journal of Contraception noted that research studies estimate 40% of women who use oral contraceptive pills (OCPs) are non-adherent to a consistent daily pill-taking routine. This is a major factor in the 9% failure rate among OCP’s in the first year of use.
Of course, it’s not just birth control pills that pose a problem for consistent usage. Approximately 50% of patients receiving treatment for chronic illness don’t take their medication as prescribed. While this encompasses a number of factors -- from cost, to accessibility, to education -- one of the factors impeding adherence is taking medications on a consistent, prescribed schedule.
10
https://www.dovepress.com/strategies-to-improve-compliance-amongoral-contraceptive-pill-users-a-peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-OAJC
CONVENIENT
PRIVATE
WELL DESIGNED
CUSTOMIZABLE
Ideation
13
Feedback I For the first round of feedback, I walked through the idea and sketches for the project with professor Henry Yoo and Keith Kirkland of WearWorks. Keith expressed his feeling that the project seemed like a justifiable use of haptic devices and reassured me that even if the initial prototypes were clunky, I could use those to get useful user feedback and then simultaneously present an “appearance model� to users of what the ideal final product would look like. He also encouraged me to allow user testing to inform the final form, and experiment with different methods for opening the storage container to see what users preferred.
14
15
Prototyping
17
18
Digital Integration
Since the idea for this project is to have a connected device, it was not enough just to design a physical prototype -- I wanted to design a digital one as well. This allowed me to walk users through the flow and get simultaneous feedback on the digital, as well as the physical, components of the project at the same time. To do this I used the digital design application Sketch to create the mobile screens and then the prototyping app Invision to make a functioning app that users could click through.
19
Mobile App Screens
User Testing
Lessons learned from user testing: 1. For future versions of the digital app, it makes sense to remove the “plus” button at the bottom of the screen for user flows that don’t directly relate to adding a new medication or a new alarm. Otherwise it gets confusing 2. Consider changing the notification icon that is currently a bell to something that won’t potentially be confused with the alarm icon
25
Most of the feedback was positive and suggested that there is a market for this kind of product. Henry suggested that metal extrusion might be the preferred manufacturing method for a final product. He also suggested that if I were to compile this user testing and prototype into a presentation, I could approach an existing haptic wearable company with a strong pitch for an addition to their product line.
26
Feedback II
For the second round of feedback, I presented my idea to Henry and some classmates and walked through the experience -- including the functioning haptic component and the wireframe of the iPhone app.
27
Display
When thinking about how to display the working appearance prototype, I considered a few different factors: 1. Ease of interactivity with viewers. I wanted to create a walkthrough flow where I could show them the evolution of the prototypes and have medication on hand for demonstrations 2. Context. Since I wanted to create an elegant, high style medication storage solution I ensured that the presentation reflected that. I used commercial jewelry displays at stores such as Anthropologie or Madewell as inspiration for display designs that would appeal to millenials. 3. Customization. When presenting my design, I also included samples of other surface treatments that could be available for customization of the jewelry.
29
30
31
Branding When thinking about branding for the project, I wanted to create an identity that would appeal to millenials and make the product seem fun and friendly. Most of the existing products in the medication management field are geared towards the elderly and have a heavy, serious tone. I wanted to break through that landscape by using bright colors and a visual lexicon borrowed from the digital world of ombre colors and simple, clean graphic design. I chose the name ring ring since it evokes both the function of the product (as an alarm that rings) and the form of the product (as a haptic piece of jewelry, such as a ring). On top of that, it was also a short, fun name that would be easy to remember.
32
WORDMARK
MOTTO
BRAND COLORS
#253c69
#ddfffc
#9499fc
33
34
Feedback III For the presentation of our semester’s work at ID View, I made sure the ring ring poster was front and center. I ensured that the device was charged up and that the working digital prototype was on my phone and ready to walk through with visitors. Unfortunately, there was not many new faces to provide feedback that I hadn’t already interacted with. That said, I walked through the product with Dana Schwimmer from TOM:NYC and she reiterated previous feedback that she believed there was a market for this kind of product in the medication management field. After talking with her for a while, I came to the conclusion that further research into cost of production of future design iterations of this project is necessary in order to create a strong pitch and business case for this device. I plan on following up with her after conducting that research.
35
36
Moving Forward In the future, there are a few different areas for improvement I’d like to focus on with regards to the ring ring product: 1. Making the medication storage component modular and magnetic. This way, it can be attached to a variety of haptic devices (a bracelet, earrings, a necklace). I would also like to create an attachment it could connect with on a phone so that it could serve as a medication storage phone accessory -- either standalone or coupled with the mobile app. 2. Refine the styling of the bracelet storage and cover so that it is more elegant and less bulky. Perhaps using the manufacturing method of metal extrusion would make sense for the new design. 3. More user testing! You can never get enough feedback from users on painpoints and further areas of improvement.
37
Originally from Charlotte, North Carolina, I did my undergraduate studies at the UNC Chapel Hill where I graduated with a degree in environmental science.
About Me
From there, I moved to Providence, Rhode Island to work for a cleantech startup, then found my way to working as a project manager and junior frontend developer for a digital design agency. While in Providence, I discovered the field of industrial design and fell in love with the work. I’m currently pursuing a master’s of industrial design at Pratt Institute as a member of the class of 2020. If you have any questions about this project, or about anything at all, feel free to reach out -- I love meeting new people!
Best, Jess
Jessica Smith jsmith22@pratt.edu
39