Product innovation case study: Trip companion for cancer survivors
The costs and challenge of delivering healthcare creates a need to make care more personal. Effective health treatment needs to move out outside of the hospital and into people’s daily homes and lives. The forward thinking approach is to emphasise the patient experience.
The client I consulted with is advancing cancer research in the USA, they identified the need to create a support companion for cancer survivors while they’re away from the clinic. To tackle this issue I collaborated with the client to clarify the problem, understand the users and imagine a digital future of personalised healthcare for cancer survivors. Together we designed a new mobile application to meet the challenges of effective care outside of the hospital.
Creating a value proposition
Make it easy for survivors to follow the care plan, after the leave the hospital, and encourage patients to actively participate in their treatment plan.
Allow patients to easily visualise their progress to feel good about their efforts.
Allow patients to easily visualise their progress to feel good about their efforts.
Develop a system that improves real lives of real patients.
Build an experience that supports current and future use cases.
I collaborated with the client’s cancer research and user experience team to understand the objectives. Using a lean human-centred development process we iterated from concept to product, developing a better way to deliver cancer care outside the hospital.
Together with the client’s research team, we identified three main areas to focus on that would result in the best patient outcomes; heart health, mood health and cancer tests. I helped the client with a new way of working, shifting the focus to value and patient outcomes over features.
Theory of gamification to achieve behaviour change
There are no out-of-the-box solutions in behaviour change, it is very personal and context-dependant. Once we had understood our users existing behaviours and motivations, we blended foundational concepts of gamification theory to elicit a change that would result in positive health outcomes.
Gamification does not mean it’s a game.
We identified three theories of behavior change that would improve patient outcomes; hook theory, habit creation and self-awareness. We helped the client understand that gamification doesn’t mean game mechanics, and through prototype testing we also learnt a lot along the way.
Hook theory has it’s roots in BJ Fogg’s behaviour model, which shows that people need a trigger, motivation and ability to perform a behaviour. We also add a variable reward to keep users coming back and create investment behaviour. We set out to trigger patients with an alert about a test result or mood check in, something that is easy to action. We then reward the patient with feedback and progress that creates a habit — rinse and repeat.
Self-improvement is impossible without self-awareness. By becoming self-aware, we can gain a greater degree of control of how we are operating in the present. The basis of quantified self assumes that if you collect data about yourself you can make improvements based upon it.
Old habits are hard to break, but through repetition it’s possible to form good new ones. Building a motivating chain of done habits and perfect days is fuel for habit creation. We want users to focus on just the right habits for the day, not overwhelming them with too much to do. We trigger and build upon habits through helpful reminders, positively encouraging good habits.
Understanding the human behind the illness
Together with the research about behaviour change theories, we ran our own research to understand the user: the so called cancer survivors. We had the pleasure to work very close with the clinical research team to understand who are the humans that live within the statistics: their problems, their needs, and even more importantly: how they feel.
We soon understood that each case is unique. Beyond the statistics are individual, real people with their own case of cancer and their own fight. Every user is different and thinking about them as cancer survivors only is not enough. We were designing for humans with real stories, real problems and feelings, not for a generic idealised ‘cancer survivor’.
Having that idea on top of our minds that there are as many stories as individuals, we decided to create a persona summarising all the expert knowledge of the team and above all, helping us to create empathy with the user across the project.
That’s how Laura joined the team.
The next step was to try to understand what Laura’s journey could be using the app. Together with the team, we ran a workshop in order to identify what the Laura’s activities, her feelings across the journey, how we could serve her needs along the different scenarios and possible warnings that we should keep in mind.
Product principles to create a better life
Once we had an idea of the real problem, together with the UXD team we started the conceptualisation phase, defining the principles that would guide our design process.
Keep focus: Don’t overwhelm the user with too many options
Motivate: Give the user feedback and keep them motivated
Be holistic: A balanced approach to the user’s health
These principles formed the foundation for translating into the apps’ main functionalities:
Keep focus is the principle behind the idea of giving the user only one task each time, not overwhelming them with many options.
Motivate supports the concept of providing the user constant feedback and self-awareness statistics.
Be holistic is why we decided to have only one feed where we mix the different content areas and prioritising them, each one with a colour code.
One of the most important pieces of the project was to convince the stakeholders about the need for simplicity in the approach to achieve success, switching from a click to discover framework to a intelligent feed with all the different actions mixed together and prioritized for the medical team.
Defining the right amount of content, alerts and notifications was another problem to solve for the project, finding the right balance between engaging the user and but not overwhelming them.
Last but not least, it was very important to make it easy for the user to enter the data the system needs. For that we created a easy access plus ‘+’ button that allows the user to enter relevant inputs when they want to such as a test result or mood entry. This worked in conjunction with the contextual system of reminders we defined, creating a holistic care system that is engaging but not disruptive.
The app is currently being used in a cancer research study of 2,000 survivors across the north west region of the USA. The aim of the study is to determine if we can improve the rate of cancer survival using digital tools. Focusing on prevention not reaction. We are continuing our journey with the client as we learn, iterate and adapt to meet the needs of these users.
It’s tremendously exciting and enriching work to make a difference to lives like Laura and others going through a similar journey.
