CAMS - Asthma Companion

A user research and UX design project for my SUTD Technology Entrepreneurship (STEP) Masters’ Dissertation. 

The Problem

5% of residents in Singapore aged 18-69 years old have asthma, and 20% of children suffer from asthma as well (2020). While asthma treatment has improved rapidly, the number of hospitalizations continue to remain high (Chew, 2021). There also remains high cost of care for asthma due to drugs and consultation fees. How might we reduce hospitalization rate and ease these costs?

The Solution

CAMS (Comprehensive Asthma Management by Self) – Asthma Companion. CAMS is an app that is designed to help asthma patients better manage their asthma on their own. Through medication notifications and the use of streaks, asthma patients are motivated and reminded to take their preventer inhaler daily, which aligns with the current ACE Guidelines in Singapore. The implementation of a digital log also allows for the digital tracking of medication, allowing doctors to better understand their patient’s medication adherence as well as track common triggers to give better advice to their patients during asthma reviews.

Product Goals

1. Remind users when to take their medication

2. Remind users to log their medication when taken as well as allows them to record when they experience an asthma attacks

3. Patients have a better understanding of their asthma triggers and how to manage them

4. Doctors now have a more definite understanding of their patient’s medication adherence

Lo-fi Prototype - Wireframing

Based on the first ideation of the low-fidelity prototype done on Figma, I received several feedback on the design and consistency of the screens and reiterated to create a high-fidelity prototype. 

Usability Testing 1

With the high-fidelity prototype, I conducted a cognitive walkthrough with follow up interviews after the entire testing process. 5 participants were involved and both qualitative and quantitative data were collected.

Several methods of user research were used:

• Think-aloud process

• Quantitative analysis

• System Usability Scale

• Interviews

• Observations

Findings (not all):

• Users felt that there could be greater clarity of what each icon in the navigation bar meant

• Users were confused with the language used (Asthma Action Plan and Asthma Control Questionnaire - this could be partly because these subjects were not asthma patients and hence did not understand the language used during the study)

• Users were satisfied with the calendar page to track their progress

Based on the feedback provided and observations of where the users struggled during the different tasks, I moved on to the next iteration.

Usability Testing 2

After the second iteration, another round of user testing was done. This time, this was done with 5 different asthma patients. 

The methods used were similar to that in User Testing 1.

Findings (not all):

• Not all users use an asthma action plan, and moreover, they preferred to look at their symptoms instead of doing a questionnaire to understand which zone they were in

• Users were confused how they could add reminders without a medication registering page at the beginning

• Users wanted to see the summary of their progress on the home page as well instead of the image of a mountain

After several more rounds of feedback from the doctor and the team... here's the final design!