Changing Diabetes Through Social Media.
in collaboration with
Novo Nordisk
To explore and expand the company's notion of 'Changing Diabetes' ,
beyond medication, within the context of people living with Type-1 Diabetes.
SHOUT !!
is an open community platform enabling PWD to express thoughts, share experiences and lifestyle tips, aid in case of need or even air challenges to people around them in an expressive and pro-active way. Shouts can take any form, be it text, audio or even visual imagery
Express Share and Connect
Online social networks currently provide a platform for knowledge sharing, developing a sense of community, conversation, expert opinions, awareness, self diagnoses and general sharing/venting of personal experiences.
Diabetes type 1 patients are typically diagnosed as children. By the time social networks and social media play a huge role in the lives of young people in today, but these networks and tools do not come without their challenges when taken into the healthcare realm. Doctor/patient privacy laws, trust, accuracy, liability and the general fragmentation of healthcare systems and providers must not be ignored.
PROCESS / OBSERVATIONS / QUESTIONS:
Our Initial focus was into looking deeper into Lifestyle choices and commitments that people make towards leading balanced lives.
We talked with a number of people , both with persons living with diabetes and also with Professionals involved in food-hospitality and fitness-well being industries (One on one and telephonic interviews).
Based on our Interviews , the team pooled together insights and conducted brainstorming sessions for ideas.
Then, clustering of ideas and concept scenarios were generated over a day , which ended with the presentation to the client:
Over the next few days of interviews, observations and brainstorming around the researched data,
we built a structure of insights and How might we’s.
The over-arching goals of our end project were then framed as
‘How might we create mainstream lifestyle trends inspired by the lifestyles of people with diabetes?
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'How might we create opportunities to express, share or engage in common tasks/interests/ activities ?’
These sentences were based on our insights that ‘expression of thought’ aids people with the constant stress involved in dealing with their illness and the insight that sharing common tasks enables people to understand each other better, as it helps break notions or preconceptions about each other (especially with regard to notions about diabetes).
This led us to build three concepts, of which one – called ‘Shout!!’ – was taken into the experience prototyping phase.
Low fidelity paper prototypes:
Experience prototyping of the initial idea helped us change and evolve our concept and value propositions further.
We built paper prototypes initially and tested the interface with one of our correspondents, who shared great enthusiasm with our concept, and also looked at it critically giving us valuable insights into the values we thought about and the potential benefits it could have to the community.
From the previous process, we extracted 1concept and has experience prototyping the idea with paper prototyping which is mobile apps,prop-making around the chosen idea about broadcasting thoughts , sharing events etc over online / mobile platforms.
Higher fidelity with mock web interfaces :
Our concept then evolved into being an open platform for people who might need help immediately and with helping in community bonding which was quite a bit more than our initial idea of basic expression and joining events being the primary nature of the shouts.
We then built a prototype web interface of the same concept which was again tested to validate and share some ideas with respondents.
TOUCH POINTS:
It is envisioned as being present on both web and mobile based location based platforms, where audio, visual expressions could be shared. As shown below in the images and in the video above.
QUOTE / INSIGHT:
" I do not want to be a diabetic anymore !! " ....
A message of frustration on facebook by one our interviewees was one of the primary motivators for the team in the the development of this project.
What started with an investigation into Lifestyle habits and choices of PWD , led us to understand that:
- The need to have emotional outlets and connections with other people who share the same ailment or who understand the situation is paramount in being motivated to lead a healthy, compliant lifestyle.
- There are moments where assistance is hard to come by for PWD , both from friends and family. Thus a means to connect immediately with PWD's around you is necessary for obtaining quick aid.
- Among the general public
- People with Diabetes could be thought leaders into leading healthy lifestyles as they are constantly aware of the changes in their body and need to maintain a constant balance between what they consume and what they metabolize.
Why is it valuable?
VALUE PROPOSITION:
The service is a location based open platform which will target people with diabetes as a primary user group, but with a potential to diffuse into the general populace, who may find topics of common interest being discussed with regard to lifestyle choices. For example, helping out a person who has doubts with regard to general diabetes care or getting to know about all the organic food places in one area.
- One of the primary values we found was that of expression and how it helps in dealing with the daily stress involved in dealing with diabetes.
- Knowing that there are other people in the locality who share the same lifestyle or have found ways of dealing with diabetes and the various aspects of care involved could go a long way
- Shout could help in aiding people who might have immediate needs and need quick answers from members of the community
- People with diabetes could be viewed as thought leaders , especially with regards to having healthy, balanced lifestyles and this could have a great potential in diffusing out to the general public.
* This project has been designed by Harsha Vardhan,Harikrishnan Gopalakrishnan and Daim Yoon during the "Industry project : Novo Nodisk" class held
by Cordy Swope, Julia Frederking and Nina Christoffersen at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction DesignCIID.
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