Forget me not: Understanding the pains of taking epilepsy medication
How we went back to the basics, and learnt about what users undertaking epilepsy medication need
Seer Health’s current medication manager was rife with a number of usability issues
We were getting feedback from confused users and poor quality data, which was at odds with our mission of empowering users to better manage their epilepsy with data.
It was clear we needed a design uplift, but where do we begin?
Delightful illustrations courtesy of Brandon Mendoza (Blush)
Overview
I conducted discovery to better understand the needs of users undertaking epilepsy management, and identify areas of improvement.
Insights from discovery and usability testing uncovered clear UX issues, and were used to inform the design strategy and product brief moving forward. I learnt to how to research within constraints, and still uncover integral information!
Impact
-
Discovery
Competitive analysis
Usability testing
App audit -
Product Manager
Data Scientist
Senior Developers -
1 month (approx)
I had three goals by the end of discovery
Better understand the needs of users undertaking medication management, to inform design improvements
Gain empathy
Identify medication management best practices from established apps, and opportunities to leverage ourselves
Competitive analysis
Usability testing
Take an honest look at our own app and where we can do better
Gain empathy
So obviously, we talk to patients, right?
Unfortunately, I ran into some roadblocks. Direct access to patients was tricky due to lacking a set-up user research pipeline, and concerns with overburdening patients.
I decided to adopt a flexible approach and used a combination of social media observations, paper research, and casual interviews to identify high-level themes.
User journey
I compiled my high level findings into a user journey, which helped the team better understand user needs.
We also generated a lot of potential feature ideas from identified pain points.
Key empathy insights
Patients (and carers) require the most support for accurately tracking dosage and frequency of medications
Insight 1
More than one medication might be taken per day, and might have specific instructions on how and when to take them, to maximise effectiveness.
There is often a lot of experimentation before a patient gets their medication right
Insight 2
Epilepsy medication can come with a boatload of side effects, ranging from forgetfulness to extreme personality changes (e.g., Keppra rage). In some cases, patients may need to gradually increase or decrease the dosage of their medication over time to achieve the desired therapeutic effect or minimize side effects.
Competitive analysis
I performed competitive analysis across 10 highly rated medication and habit tracking apps, to better understand our position relative to competition, and identify opportunities for differentiation.
The top rated medication tracking apps kept things simple via automation and smarter defaults
Medication name, strength, and icons in particular were some things that could be automated for users, which reduced a lot of manual input time
However, insights highlighting the relationship between medication and condition were lacking...
Opportunities to leverage ourselves can come from providing users exportable epilepsy specific insights for patients to share with doctors.
Usability testing
I ran a usability testing session with some friends and colleagues (total 6) outside the team to understand how people were interpreting the current flows of the medication manager.
Key identified issues
Overly crammed interface with high load of manual (sometimes non-essential) input and poor defaults
Rigid and unintuitive scheduling options
Confusing user flows
Usability test with 1 of 6 participants
She was blocked from progressing unless she filled out reminder name (non-essential)
Sample app audit
Aha moment!
Our medication manager wasn’t up to speed, but we did have most of the foundational ingredients (frequency, time, and dosage).
This meant that we could score some quick wins with minor (famous last words?) adjustments to visual hierarchy and copy, and stage meatier changes accordingly.
Reflections
Step outside the box with research
In an ideal world, I would have direct access to my target users and I could have limitless time to interview them to gain empathy. However, working in a start-up meant that this wasn’t always possible due to limited resources and time constraints. I learnt that other forms of multi-faceted research, such as social media observations, or testing flows with colleagues can be just as powerful for gaining quick research wins.
Competition can be your greatest teacher
Honestly, I found the competitive analysis to be the most useful research tool for gaining quick insightful wins. I learnt a lot about best practices just by observing more established apps solve similar problems, and quickly learnt about where we could do better.
Nothing beats testing our own assumptions if possible, of course!
Impact and next steps
These insights were presented to stakeholders to positive feedback, and used to formulate a design brief in collaboration with my Product Manager.
Read about how I translated these insights into designs in the next case study.