Project 1 – Scott J Duncan's Portfolio

GlucoseTrak: Diabetes Management Application

Overview

Smartphone application for diabetics
Tracks blood glucose, medications, meals, and exercise
Prototype built with Figma

This application is designed for diabetics and allows them to fine tune their blood glucose balance by tracking health goals and providing analytics that give insight into meeting those goals.

The application assists diabetics in managing and tracking their diabetes health, meals, exercise, and more in a convenient and user-friendly manner, and incentivizes them to keep their blood glucose levels within a healthy range.

Problem Statement

Diabetics must keep track of large amounts of data in order to be healthy and their methods for keeping track of this data range from pen and paper to complicated spreadsheets and applications. By simplifying the process of data entry and keeping track of data such as blood glucose, medicine, meals, and exercise, diabetics will be able to use their mental bandwidth for making healthy choices and focusing on themselves rather than spending their energy on keeping track of all the data.

Design Steps

Research on Diabetes

Conducted research on the demographics, medicines, nutrition, hormones, and technologies that affect diabetics.

Learned that:

Most diabetics are over age 45
Most diabetics are type 2, who take no insulin injections
Optimal blood glucose levels are between 70 and 180 mg/dl

Blood glucose is affected by:

Medicine (e.g. insulin, pills)
Food (e.g. carbohydrates, protein)
Activity
Weight
Hormones
Sleep

Interview with a Diabetic

Interviewed a type 1 diabetic on their issues with diabetes management, and what their experience is with smartphone applications for diabetes. This person explained that they collect an immense amount of data such as blood glucose numbers multiple times a day, meals, exercise, and multiple medicines. Inputting and keeping track of all this data is a huge challenge for them and is kept track of with multiple applications such as diabetes apps, notetaking apps, calendar apps, and alarm apps.

Competitive Market Analysis

Looked at popular diabetes applications and researched what they do and how they function. Three popular diabetes apps that I analyzed were Glucose Buddy, MySugr, and Diabetes:M. Their main focuses are to give diabetics the tools to enter a plethora of health data, and to find insights into how their health can be improved.

Online Survey of Diabetics

Created a survey on diabetes management and used diabetes online forums to find participants for the study. Their input was invaluable, and forced me to reevaluate what I should be focusing on with the problem I was trying to solve. One particular insight I gained was that although every diabetic must manage their blood glucose, they all have different methods for tracking that data, and they also have very individualized needs. A one size fits all approach is nearly impossible to achieve. The second insight is that the desire to spend as little time as possible on diabetes management was evident with all of the participants.

User Personas

Created 4 user personas of diabetics to then create user journey maps. Each user persona detailed a different type of user for the application.

User Journey Maps

Created user journey maps to detail the process of using the application.

User Journey Map 1 Tom Miller Onboarding

User Journey Map 2 Damien Williams Add Meal

Concept Sketches

Created concept sketches for the pages of the application. Starting with a basic setup for how to display health data over a period of hours and days, I then started to fill out the details and configuration of menus.