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More than 61 million people with diabetes live in India. Diabetes was estimated to be responsible for 109 thousand deaths, 1157 thousand years of life lost in India just during 2004. My family is no different. All of the members above 50 in my in-law's family are suffering form type 2 diabetes. One of them went ahead to say that this is inheritance problem and will go with their life. This triggered me and made me think, how can we ease the problem of health maintenance when people are so busy with other work and household chores.
"It is very common now to get diabetic at my age. Now it is part of my life and I have to live with it ...
How might we leverage the patient's caregiver network like family and community to help the patients in keeping up with their diabetic health routine
A smart connect ring designed to help diabetic patients stay on top of their daily healthcare routine through glucose monitoring, caregiver’s nudges and doctor’s consultation when required.
Looks cool, right! But, how did I reach till here? Here is the quick walk through of the process if you want to get into to the weeds!
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Looks cool, right! But, how did I reach till here? Here is the quick walk through of the process if you want to get into to the weeds!
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Spent on diabetic
management in 2019
People with Type 2
diabetes living in India
People are living with
diabetes living in India
spent on diabetic managment in 2019
people with Type 2 diabetes living in India
people are living with diabetes living in India
Post initial secondary research about numbers, I started learning more about the disease and how it is caused. Below you can see a system diagram of how different components play different role in regulating and causing diabetes. Once an imbalance (external disturbance) is introduced due to eating and lifestyle habits, it just disturbs the system and diabetes enters in. I interviewed couple of diabetic patients from my target segment and some of their exact quotes are presented later.
“It is very common now to get diabetic at my age. Now it is part of my life and I have to live with it.”
Acceptance of the medical condition as a status quo
"I will do my house chores or I will handle these devices. I don't want to increasee my work load"
Hesitation and complexities in self care and reporting
"Due to of house chores I often forget to take medicine on time also I always get to eat brunch"
Handling devices is another work
"I don't want to wear something which is costly and will look like a medical device"
Can’t afford device like apple watch and don't want to see herself as patient all the time
Acceptance of the medical condition as a status quo
“It is very common now to get diabetic at my age. Now it is part of my life and I have to live with it.”
Handling devices is another work
"I will do my house chores or I will handle these devices. I don't want to increasee my work load"
Hesitation and complexities in self care and reporting
"Due to of house chores I often forget to take medicine on time also I always get to eat brunch"
Can’t afford device like apple watch and do’t want to see herself as patient all the time
"I don't want to wear something which is costly and will look like a medical device"
To visualize the problem better, I quickly laid out a day-like of Manju Singh – a diabetic patient from India. Here you can see how the lifestyle is hugely impacting the reason for diabetes. What I could identify from this daily routine of Mrs. Singh is that, there are different pain points that is contributing to worsening diabetic effect in the patient. It is not just eating habits, but also the eating times, the quantity, the frequency of meal, the gapping, the forgetfulness about taking medicine on time and completely avoiding the physical activity. All combined contributes to worsened effect of diabetes for Mrs. Singh.
If we try to visualize the pain points, I can see them as laid out in this figure from primary to secondary growing outwards. This really helped me in prioritization of the features of my future solution
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I have selected my target user form a developing country where people will not be inclined to wear a smart watch all the time and at the same time, will not be willing to go to laboratory to get the glucose level tested very frequently, just because of their lifestyle. A smart ring makes perfect sense here. A ring powered with quantum cascade laser lights which are already FDA approved for testing glucose levels.
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I started with the strategy and derived my design principles which I will use to drive my though process at every step.
Inspire by the book – “thinking in systems” by DonellaMcDowell, I thought, just by providing a monitoring device is not enough. Healthcare is better maintained when there is also someone to take care of it. I had to penetrate the patient's network from its caregiver to other people in who are connected. Below is the system map that slowly flourished in my mind when I started expanding my horizon of cause-and-effect relationship while thinking in systems.
While thinking in systems, I also had to be mindful of not making the whole product suite very complex as derived from my design principles. And that is why I laid out conceptual map which talks about the user’s perception of the product. And this is the one that we want to keep it simple.
With enough research, data and ideas in mind, I started giving life to the imaginations.
My target users really helped me in coming up with a simple and acceptable design after multiple iterations as you can see in the slider below.
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Since I am no expert, I learned a ton through the journey.
I hope I was able to communicate with you in a digestible manner. If you like it, give me a call or shoot me a line/email and we can talk about how we can work together. You will see how, I utilize my strength of deeply empathizing with the users to design veracity of products that users love. My savior skill of adaptability and fast learning is what I lean on all the time!
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