Supporting Self-Management in Patients with Diabetes
Design Opportunity
How might we better support patient self-management of diabetes to help address the challenges that contribute to unmanaged high blood sugar?
Quick Facts
The Details
Role & Activities
I scoped, planned, and led research and design activities for discovery, design, and delivery phases of the project cycle including:
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Secondary research
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Stakeholder interviews
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Patient listening sessions
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Generative research workshops
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Research synthesis
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Co-creative idea generation workshops
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Prioritization workshop
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Documentation and presentation of project plans, updates, and deliverables
As lead designer on this project, I drafted a project plan and timeline of design activities and finalized them with my director before presenting them to the committee for approval (Image 1).
Research & Synthesis
I conducted stakeholder interviews to develop a systems perspective and understand the history of this kind of work within the organization. I also conducted more than 30 listening sessions with patients (following Indi Young’s approach to problem space research) to gather data on patient thinking styles and diabetes support needs. Through synthesizing
Image 1: Project Plan
the data from these listening sessions - developing a set of qualitative research codes to tag the data, writing summaries of the data, exporting, and creating affinity groups to find themes - I developed a mental model diagram (Image 2) representing all the actions people take to manage diabetes.
Image 2: Mental Model Diagram
Image 3: Additional Support Areas
Image 4: Sample Insight
Insights & Solution Concepts
I used follow on sessions with 10 patients to get their feedback on the model and ask them to share which of these areas felt most important to have more support in. These 24 areas or actions (Image 3) became the basis for evaluation of gaps in our current services and idea generation for improved and new service concepts in co-creative workshops.
I also developed a set of key insights and recommendations (Image 4) regarding patient needs and the organization’s overall approach to diabetes care based on the results of the patient research and co-creative workshops.
Prioritization Workshop
Clinical and non-clinical staff including primary care providers, practice supervisors, diabetes educators, registered dieticians, health coaches, pharmacists, and nurses
brainstormed ideas which the committee discussed and prioritized (Image 5) in our final workshop. The committee identified 7 groups of “Quick Win” concepts and 8 groups of “Major Projects” to explore and test. These were presented to the Network’s “High Value Care Council” to be integrated with their overall strategy.
Image 5: Prioritization Matrix
Image 6: Concept Development Framework
Future Directions
To set the group up for future work, I created a development framework to guide future project groups through moving a concept toward implementation based on its design maturity, i.e. how much we know about its feasibility, desirability, and viability (Images 6 and 7). I evaluated and categorized each concept into the development framework as part of our final handoff.
Image 7: Concept Development Framework Categories
