Neu Health
A patient app and corresponding clinician dashboard MVP, that uses machine learning tools to measure the progression and guide treatment of Parkinson's.
Client
Neu Health
Duration
14 Weeks
Deliverables
Patient App and Clinician Desktop Prototype.
Tools
Figma
About Neu Health
Neu Health is a London based company that specializes in making Parkinson's and dementia care accessible for all. Neu Health enables clinicians, care givers and patients to tackle this growing challenge with cutting-edge digital technologies designed to make the latest care accessible for all, improving outcomes today and accelerating future breakthroughs. Neu Health builds on 10 years of research and clinical validation by neurologists, neuroscientists, and data scientists from the University of Oxford, with the concept having been trialed and validated successfully in over 1,500 participants, and described in international, peer reviewed publications.
Project Goal
Create an patient app that collects data on patients Parkinson's through various exercises and ratings, and helps them better manage their condition and medication. Create a corresponding clinician desktop dashboard that collects all the patient app data and presents it to clinicians easily.
Problem
For the patient app, users need to be incentivized to complete all required daily or weekly exercises, over a long period of time, in order to gain consistent results.
For the clinician dashboard, all the results need to be clearly organized and accessible, so clinicians clearly understand the data.
Solution
For the patient app, the solution is to create rewards for users to earn as they complete their exercises, minimize the amount of screens and buttons for exercises, and break up exercises into smaller tasks in order to not overwhelm the user.
For the clinician dashboard, the solution is to focus on the information hierarchy and create a dashboard that primarily consists of cards where data can be viewed at the same time.
Research Insights
User research was presented to me when I started this project. I also conducted research on my own, focusing on accessibility and design standards for dashboards, tests, and surveys, and how to incentivize users. This project was broken up into two 7 week phases. We held two rounds of user testing per phase. The app and desktop dashboard was user tested by 13 patients and clinicians.
Patients with Parkinson's can suffer from tremors and can have difficulty with mobility. To make the app accessible to all patients, buttons need to be large and easy to press, and text needs to be large and easy to read.
Patients want to fill out the absolute minimum information when signing up for the app.
Even though patients will be completing the same exercises or ratings multiple time over a longer period of time, clear written and sometimes visual explanations need to always be visible.
Patient's schedule vary and they will not always have time to complete schedule exercises and ratings. The ability to delay and pause exercises and ratings need to be added to give the patients flexibility. To encourage consistent compliance, if a patient pauses their exercise, they will be notified that they must complete said exercise within a certain amount of time, or they will have to restart the entire exercise.
Clinicians prefer to have all information on one page. They don't want to be flipping through multiple pages or windows to keep track of information.
Clinicians expressed the desire to trigger exercises at any time. Clinicians want some control over testing.
Information Architecture
The user journey for the patient app was extensive and required the many changes as the app was designed and user tested. See below the initial user journey for the 1st prototype.
The clinician dashboard design was 2 pages, plus a log in page. Instead of a user journey for the clinician dashboard, I worked with Neu Health to identify what information and features were required and what the hierarchy of value was. We worked through the user journey together in meetings, rearranging the wireframe to best fit the MVP's goal.
Expanding Branding
I was provided with a branding guide that included the logo, font, and colour palette. For this project, I expanded the assets by designing a set of icons, expanding the colour palette, and designed a friendly and clean looking UI style that matched their logo and mission. Illustrations were required for this project but due to time and budget, stand in illustrations were used.
Exercises and Ratings
The Neu Health app contains 5 types of exercises and ratings; Parkinson’s symptom exercise, memory exercise, 2 types of questionnaires, and a symptom rating section. New users will be required to do a set of test 4 times a day, for 1 week. After, users will be prompted to do a set of test once a week. These tests depend on their symptoms and are prompted at different frequencies.
To prevent users from feeling overwhelmed, I designed an agenda that would show the user what exercises or ratings they were being prompted to complete. A progress bar and cards becoming active and inactive, showing completion, shows the user their progress. Neu Health's goal is to have users complete all tests every time they are prompted but during user testing, some users provided feedback that the test may be too long or they may be interrupted during their exercises and ratings. A pause feature has been added, allowing the user to resume within a time period.
When rating symptoms or filling our questionnaires, I designed cards with emoji ratings. Each user rates 5 symptoms, that they selected during onboarding and can change on their profile, at any time. The symptom rating cards are given their own screens with different background colors to clearly differentiate that each card is asking about a new symptom. The questionnaires on the other hand could be anywhere from 18 to 40 questions long. Thus these cards are stacked and can be scrolled through. Users showed positive feedback to these designs during testing.
Exercise Agenda
Rating Symptoms
Questionnaire
Home Page
The home page is where users can access all pages and functions, including accessing their agenda of exercises, viewing the results of those exercises, and accessing various educational articles. The home page is also where users can see how many exercises they have completed and the growth of their "progress tree". This tree will visually "grow", gaining branches, height, and additional accents, such a birds or flowers, as more exercises are completed.
Users can click on the results button to see the results of their symptom ratings and Parkinson's exercises over time. These are simplified graphs to give users an overview of their Parkinson's condition. All data is only available to the clinicians on their dashboard. I designed one screen with an overview of all data. Users can tap these charts to see a close up of individual data. These graph styles were chosen because this is how this data is usually shown and our research shows that most Parkinson's patients are already familiar with these graphs styles.
Neu Health also aims to provide new educational research that can help patients learn more about and better manage their Parkinson's and Parkinson's related symptoms. I designed an education screen where users can browse Neu Health approved articles. Each card/link takes the user out of the app and directly to the article.
Viewing Results
Educational Articles
Medication Management
Both app users and clinicians can view, edit, add, and delete medication. I researched various medications app and designed a simple layout, that is consistent with other screens, that show the users medication. Users can toggle whether they want the Neu Health app to alert them when it is time to take a medication.
Users can easily add new medications or edit existing medications. When any change is made to their medication, the clinician dashboard is alerted of this change. Also, if the clinician adds, edits, or deletes any medication, the patients is alerted of this change through an immediate push notification and when they next open the app. Medication changes are usually made when clinicians and patients are in an appointment together, but sometimes changes occur outside of appointments.
Patient App
Clinician Desktop
Hierarchy and Cards
Clinicians have a lot of data to view per patient. Scores and overall health ratings were prioritized at the top, followed by cards with more detailed score and results overviews, and finally cards for each chosen symptom or tested symptom (gait, balance, tremor, etc.)
In order to keep the dashboard clean, graphs can toggle through different views, data points are revealed by hovering over dots, and cards can be minimized. During user testing, clinicians responded positively to this layout and found the features easy to use and understand.
Clinician Desktop
Conclusion
The Neu Health MVP is a results of research, thorough user testing, design thinking, and multiple iterations. Providing the user with an enjoyable and effective experience was my priority. We focused on producing a lean product, creating the most essential elements. This final product's goal is to better inform and connect both patients with Parkinson's and clinicians that specialize in Parkinson's, so they can receive and provide better healthcare. I am really proud of how it turned out. I look forward to seeing how this project develops.
This project was completed March 2023. As of this time, Neu Health is developing this MVP.