TrackMe: Food Intolerance Discovery App

TrackMe is a tool to help people discover which foods worsen their symptoms. By analyzing their eating habits, users can refer to TrackMe to manage their diet, avoid trigger foods, and coordinate with their doctors.

TOOLS

Illustrator

Sketch

After Effects

Axure RP

SKILLS

User Research

User Testing

UI/UX Design

Branding

ROLE

End-to-end Product Designer

Individual Project

March 2020 – Present

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?

Chronic digestive disorders are one of the most common reasons for patients readmitted within 30 days. UPMC Passavant aims to reduce the readmission rates of patients diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, short for IBS. Reducing hospital readmissions represents an opportunity to lower health care costs, improve quality, and increase patient satisfaction all at once.

THE GOAL

My goal in this project is to reduce the IBS readmission rate at UPMC Passavant. I hope to accomplish this goal by creating a learning experience for newly diagnosed patients.

Because men and women benefit from different forms of treatment, I am designing an individualized patient experience that factors in gender.

UNDERSTANDING THE USER

Research Goals:

What is IBS exactly? What system is already in place for IBS patients post-diagnosis?

Why are females with IBS more often readmitted than males with IBS?

What problems do patients encounter with their current ways of doing things?

Interviewees:

3 IBS Patients; 2 female, 1 male

2 Transition Care (TC) Nurses

1 Nurse Practitioner

MAIN INSIGHTS

While some symptoms are the same for males and females, a few are exclusive to or more prominent in women, likely due to female sex hormones.

A more sex-gender-oriented approach in the medical care setting could improve understanding of heterogeneous patients suffering from IBS.

An individualized and multicomponent approach including sex and gender issues might help improve the treatment of IBS.

— Sex-Gender Differences in Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Based on my research, I decided to narrow the project scope even further to target cisgender females. I also created this journey map to timeline the user’s recovery process.

MAIN INSIGHTS

It is a functional disease that can only be maintained but not cured. Having this disease means that patients need to adopt a significant lifestyle shift (especially eating) for the rest of their life. Most patients find it difficult to fully embrace the situation directly. Additionally, patients need to fundamentally change their eating style. It is a great challenge in-between behavior change and learning. As a result, it is a place worth exploring. From interviewing patients diagnosed with IBS, I’ve learned that there is a long phase of self-discovery. There is no one list of foods to avoid for everyone diagnosed with IBS. I divided the patient’s experience into 5 phases.

HASHING OUT IDEAS

I explored three different solutions. Although I did not end up going through with options 1 and 2, learning why these would not be as effective helped inform my design decisions for option 3. Here are some of my initial ideas:

1. Flashcards for doctors treating IBS to learn about the differences between male and female symptoms.

2. AI chatbot that answers Q&A for newly diagnosed patients.

3. Food Tracker + Visual Symptom Analysis app.

LO-FI WIREFRAMES

The two features that distinguish TrackMe from other diet management apps are: 1. users communicate IBS specific issues with their doctors, and 2. analyze their own symptom trend reports.

LO-FI PROTOTYPE & USER TESTS

I reconnected with my interviewees to test the wireframes. I used paper prototypes and jotted down notes after watching them run through the prototype:

History of symptoms should be labelled as length of days and years

Compartmentalize the body: upper region, mid region and lower region. A patient would want to see both the doctors notes on the same page.

It’s good to have the interaction. Now you begin to visually represent it. Even for inputs. Do not wait until the interaction is finished to start working on the brand/visual style.

It needs to be clearer on the Progress Tab that you can enter the time frame on the top as an input.

Severity should be represented by both color and scale.

Make sure that the visual style conveys urgency in a friendly way.

Find a way to tell the user that this is a tool to help you get better, but it needs the patient to take responsibility by documenting their progress.

It makes more sense to put Plan as the second tab and Progress as the third, because Progress requires data input from the Plan tab.

HI-FI PROTOTYPES

At this point, I created the high fi wireframes after reviewing the confusion points in the low fi wireframes. I used Sketch and Illustrator to refine the visual style. I wanted to strike a balance between a serious topic and a friendly user interface.

Click below to interact with the Axure prototype.

Interactive Prototype

HI-FI WIREFRAMES

I found that one of the most frustrating parts of this disease is that it affects everyone differently. I’ve learned from my interviews that each patient has to undergo a self-discovery process of what they can and cannot do to manage their symptoms. I received positive feedback that this app is providing patients with a novel communication tool. TrackMe visually compartmentalizes the female body better horizontally. Patients should use this proactively. TrackMe is useful in cases where the symptoms are managed for months but then have a sudden flare-up. For the scope of this project, the app focuses on cisgender females of a certain age bracket.

FUTURE WORK & REFLECTION

IBS affects the quality of life, but it is manageable. TrackMe provides users a novel way to communicate with themselves and doctors. TrackMe currently provides cisgender females with a unique experience, thereby setting an example for specialized care. TrackMe aims to close the gap between doctor interpretation and female experience.