The Diabetes Design Initiative gives design students a chance to work on real-world projects with diabetes tech companies.
The catch? Many have no idea how diabetes works, or what it's like to live with a chronic disease. This project set out to change that.
Project info
Client:
UCSD Design Lab
Role:
UX Design, Development
Launch:
June 2023
A bot as your diabetes toolkit
During onboarding week, students interact with the DiaTrek Slackbot, which creates a blood sugar value for each individual.
Students are able to test their blood sugar levels, take insulin, exercise, and log other events via commands to the bot, which will cause their blood sugar value to change over time.
DiaTrek Slackbot during a simulation.
Reflections as a learning opportunity
Throughout the week, students also actively reflect upon the feelings, thoughts, and experiences they had simulating living with diabetes, both individually through reflection journals, and in group reflection activities.
Board from a group reflection activity.
Understanding the challenge of wearables
A few students additionally were chosen at random to take on the challenge of “wearing” a fake insulin pump for 24 hours and going about their day as normal. This introduced the idea of how physical devices can also come with cognitive burden.
Fake pump wearable made of modeling clay. Excuse the background, I made the first one in my car!
The DiaTrek Project was fully implemented Summer of 2022, and was used across 12 industry projects before DDI sunset in 2024.
The implementation of DiaTrek as a portion of the DDI onboarding experience allowed our students to start thinking empathetically before even beginning their research in the space. This enabled them and our industry partners to focus on deeper and more focused design discoveries.
I reviewed 15 articles across various journals. These ones in particular touted the success of simulation experiences.
01
Identifying the opportunity gap
To kickstart the design process, I first looked to exploring the landscape. I interviewed past DDI designers to better frame the problem, and reviewed existing literature on chronic disease education to see what types of approaches exist and succeed in other companies and healthcare settings.
From this research, I was particularly inspired by the success behind using simulations to teach caretakers how to care for chronic conditions. So I wondered, what if we tried using similar simulation experiences to inspire empathy?
02
Landing a concept
For a simulation to be successful, I would need to effectively create a false glucose trace for students to review. Additionally, these values would need to change in some way throughout the day, personalized to each student's daily actions.
I decided a slackbot would be the best mvp solution for the simulation due to its interactive nature and low cost entry.
The slackbot had a unique command for each of these diabetes technologies. During the experience, we called the bot your “diabetes toolbox.”
Me, acting as a bot and responding to the queries from my test subject!
03
Wizard of Oz testing
Before investing time in coding, I tested the concept with a Wizard of Oz simulation, where I pretended to be the slackbot. Working with a past DDI student, I was on high alert for the next 24 hours, waiting for that next slack ping. The experience revealed major gaps in diabetes knowledge: my participant confused calories with carbs and consistently dosed insulin incorrectly.
Despite the errors, the follow-up interview showed clear impact. She mentioned how much of a pain it was to have to think about dosing for every snack she ate, and had gained a deeper appreciation for the constant mental load people with diabetes face.
04
Building the onboarding experience
Based on this feedback, I built out a diabetes curriculum with supplemental knowledge that onboarding students could reference to learn more about how to manage the condition.
I then took some time to cobble together a buggy slackbot and some other teaching materials, and then it was off to a second round of testing…
Group reflection activity with round 2 testing participants.
05
Testing the full curriculum
I tested with a bigger group this time— 2 DDI staff, who are familiar with diabetes, and 2 student designers who know nothing about it.
This testing lasted a full week and tested all of my curriculum artifacts. The results were highly successful; even the DDI staff who had been around diabetes tech for quite a while learned new things, especially about how frustrating the condition is.
I only made two minor tweaks to the program from their feedback: clarifying some bot commands and changing the reflection format.
06
Project launch & reflections
Following my final round of changes, Diatrek was officially implemented for the first time with two groups of students for DDI Summer 2022.
Looking back at this project, I see it serving as proof that the UX process can be applied to contexts outside of just mobile applications. We can use the process of talking with stakeholders and doing in depth research to design rich, tangible experiences that have impact, even if we never create a single screen.
That being said, I still do hold onto my private wishlist item of turning this project from just a bot-focused experience into an app. Perhaps that is something I will design one day!
Workshop during the first official round of DiaTrek, prior to working with Dexcom industry partners.
