Designing apps that help ease the daily burden of managing diabetes

Because of confidentiality I’m only able to share a high level overview and describe the process and value I brought to these projects.

Apps for Medical Devices - Not your typical app

Medical device apps require additional testing and rigor around the safety and efficacy of the products to meet FDA approval. These apps prioritize safety, effectiveness and ease of use. Once met, the NEXT STEP Is to FIND WAYS TO delight the user

Product Timeline: 2019-2021

My Team:
Human Factors Engineers (5)
*Lead App UI Designer (me)
UI/UX Design Support (3)

How might we improve the usability of Medtronic diabetes devices?

Medtronic Diabetes pump therapy uses highly advanced technology and has the potential to significantly improve the life of someone who has Type 1 diabetes. So what’s the catch? Medtronic needs to improve the usability of their systems. They were not created with the user at the center of the design.

The Challenge:

Find a balance in the product design to meet different types of user needs. The goal was to design a product that anyone can use, with the ability to customize the level of detail a user wants. A person living with Type 1 diabetes can be any age. They can choose pump or injection therapy. Either option means dealing with a system that has multiple components with never-ending maintenance, constant monitoring, and having one or more devices attached to their body. Diabetes is a very complex disease and there is a wide range of user types. There are those who want more control and are interested in learning everything they can versus users who may just want to learn what they have to know in order to get by and seek more guidance. There’s also the caregiver, who is interested in monitoring and being notified that their loved one is getting the treatment needed to keep them safe.

Improving the usability and design in our apps

Medtronic has existing apps on the market that we are continually looking to advance and improve. Both through new technology and design. My goal was to create a consistent experience across all of Medtronic’s therapy apps and look for ways to improve the usability. I did this by evaluating the current pain points in the user journey to inform design concepts for mapping out system behavior that we can test with users. These insights were collected from past user research. I evaluated the list with Clinical and Marketing to identify what should be prioritized for the next gen app and the plan to incorporate the other user needs moving forward.

Leading app UI design to enhance the design and create a style guide and design management system

I oversaw 3 designers on my team and was responsible for guiding the design work and direction across all of the app UI in progress (3-4 projects). The ultimate goal was to implement a revamped design with a style guide and design management system. Once fully integrated, having a consistent style guide and DMS would come with major benefits, streamlining how designers get work done without recreating assets multiple times, bringing awareness to all of the products to match shared features, and improving how the design specs are delivered and implemented. This would result in huge time savings and eliminate a lot of stress and frustration.

Managing timelines and accurately estimating design work

Managing timelines and accurately estimating design work in the Medtronic development process was critical to success. I collaborated with cross-functional teams (Software, Systems, Marketing, Clinical) to help strategize what work to combine and how to be more effective by streamlining the design efforts that were shared across projects.

Fitting the Design Thinking Process inside the Medtronic Development Process

Evaluating how we can better fit the design thinking process within our current development process in the Medtronic Diabetes organization was a huge challenge. The business is focused on human-centered design and improving usability, but establishing what that looks like in the current process and making sure there is enough time and feedback is something we were continually working towards. There was also the added complication of updating a legacy design that had been approved by the FDA and making sure we were applying our efforts in an appropriate way.