DIABETES MANAGEMENT ECOSYSTEM
Insulin titration app + doctor's web portal
My Dose Coach 2.0
Client
Sanofi
Role
Product Designer
*Focused on the app redesign
Timeline
July 2019 - June 2020
1
Product owners
2
Product Designers
1
Human Factor Engineer
17
Software Engineers
...
More
MY CONTRIBUTION
I joined the team to re-imagine Sanofi's diabetes management ecosystem.
Working autonomously as the primary app designer, I took ownership of My Dose Coach's onboarding, homepage, and settings redesign while assisting in the doctor portal's design.
This project consisted of researching, designing, prototyping, testing, and lots of concept explorations. Though not all of my explorations were shipped, those works set the footstone for other Sanofi products, such as Sanofi Diabetes Connect.
The app needed a revamp
My Dose Coach (MDC) is an FDA-cleared patient app, combined with a doctor web portal, that suggests optimized insulin doses by tracking patients' glucose levels. The web portal allows doctors to plan for patients and view the data synced from the app.
Sanofi launched MDC 1.0 in 2015. There are a lot of design debt accumulated since then.
* App before redesign
" Diabetes affair is troublesome and time-consuming "
Our research team interviewed patients from all over the world. We then went through the script to understand the problems. See below:
Our ultimate goal is to alleviate the stress of diabetes and insulin therapy management, enabling patients to improve their quality of life.
Making the goal actionable, we want to design an app that keeps patients informed and engaged so they can stick to their prescribed regimen.
How can we make things understandable?
How can we keep patients engaged?
How can we personalize the experience?
We decided to explore the Patient-driven Connect Devices workflows
...
We want caregivers to be able to use the app as well.
We want to partner with the pharmacy for auto medication refill.
We want to scan the food for calories.
We want to create personalized exercise goals.
We want to have an e-commerce build-in.
We (I) want to build a Chatbot.
We want patients to use the app without doctors. - "Let's start with this one." ✓
We want users to be able to connect with smart devices. - "And this one." ✓
I started with the most complicated part, onboarding
I designed the backbone flow for onboarding and then used those flows to cooperate with the risk and hardware team to understand the constraints.
Contextual guidance brainstorming
Understood what is necessary, I added steps such as contextual instructions, account creations, notifications, and tooltips, to make things usable.
Mapping out the onboarding with wireframes
I used Balsamiq to create low-fi wireframes and prototypes to visualize the experience.
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Testing the concepts with team members
Using the wireframes above, I designed a mock onboarding experience and tested it with internal folks.
Let's focus on the basics
Due to the complexity, the team decided to descope the patient-driven workflow and connected devices from the MVP scope. The focus will be elevating the existing features such as manual insulin and glucose logging, HCP remote monitoring, and dose recommendations.
But my work didn't go to the trash. In 2021, we created a connected device app - Sanofi Diabetes Connect, which I took the lead of ✨.
Wireframing
I took ownership of the app's onboarding, homepage, and settings design. My deliverables including visuals, icons, illustrations, animations.
We tested the prototype with 8 patients and 5 doctors, the results is promising
I worked with developers to build a functional prototype and designed the tasks with researchers for the patient's testing.
During the test, I observed the user interactions and turned findings into actionable design requirements for new iterations.
How to keep user informed and engaged without overwhelming them is the key.
Granular education in the context
On the homepage, patients can focus on the daily tasks and will learn about how to manage diabetes based on the progress.
My Process
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High-fi Explorations 👉
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Understand how doctors create plans 👇
No achievement is too small to celebrate
Patients will be notified of every accomplishment they made. We want to make everything celebratable.
My Process
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High-fi Explorations 👉
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Understand how data sync to doctors 👇
Just the right amount of data
In the logbook, users can view their logs and the plan progress.
With the insulin and blood glucose data, users can understand how different lifestyle affects on their bodies.
My Process
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High-fi Explorations 👉
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Understand how doctors view data 👇
For non-designers:
To better communicate the complexity, I opted to create visual clues.
For developers:
Besides hand-off tools such as Zeplin, I also annotated the UIs.
It worked well but requires too much effort to maintain. I cease doing it now. :(
For other teams:
For teams outside of the product team, such as testing, hardware, and clinical team, I documented all the SPECs in the internal system.
Launched in the US, Mexico, and India in 2020, the app has helped over 100k patients to manage their health. There are plenty of clinical researches around the effectiveness of MDC 2.0:
Key findings included:
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MDC helped the patients to adopt behavioral changes and increase their adherence to their therapy.
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MDC successfully helped patients reduce A1C, and increase WBI with no severe hypoglycemia events.
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MDC is the only MDR-certified Soliqua insulin titration application in the world.
References
Effectiveness of My Dose Coach in Achieving Self-measured Plasma Glucose Goal and Improving Well Being Index in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes in Mexico. / Cantu Santos, O. M.; Gonzalez Facio, R.; Gutierrez Gonzalez, D.; Romero-Ibarguengoitia, M. E.; Perez, H. E. Tamez (2020).
My Dose Coach, a Mobile App-Based Interactive Conversational Agent to Support Type 2 Diabetes Self-Management: Randomized Effectiveness-Implementation Trial. / Gong, E.; Baptista, S.; Russell, A.; Scuffham, P.; Riddell, M.; Speight, J.; Bird, D.; Williams, E.; Lotfaliany, M.; & Oldenburg, B. (2020).
University of Pittsburgh (U.S). (2020, December 22, - 2021, September 5). My Dose Coach Mobile App to Support Insulin Titration and Maintenance. Identifier: NCT04678661. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04678661
