GlucoseKeeper
Assisting nurses in monitoring and tracking patients' blood glucose levels
Assisting nurses in monitoring and tracking patients' blood glucose levels
For the final project of my class at the University of Virginia -- Human Machine Interface -- my group was tasked with redesigning an outdated blood-glucose tracking interface used by nurses and doctors in the ICU. I led our three-person team from identifying functional needs, to creating wire-frames, to finalizing mockups
It is crucial for those with type 1 or type 2 diabetes to remain at a healthy blood glucose level. Nurses working in the ICU must monitor their patients' blood glucose on a regular basis to ensure their health. However, each nurse is often monitoring multiple patients at once. It can be difficult to remember the trends of all of his/her patients, and it can be difficult to remember who needs an update in their blood-glucose measurement at what time
My group was given the current UI that was clearly outdated. It was our job to identify where this UI fell short and to give it some major upgrades.
The following are the core problems this product aims to solve:
November 2020
Headed team of 3 throughout entire UX/UI process
Figma
To begin our design process, my team and I decided to begin researching in order to gain a better understanding of how exactly glucose monitoring works in the ICU. Furthermore, research would help us identify and understand who exactly would be using this interface and what their needs are.
My team and I started our research by doing some general investigating of the process of blood-glucose monitoring as well as the infrastructure of the ICU. Our research was conducted by utilizing search engines as well as reading material provided by our professors. This research helped us build context around the interface we were designing, later develop our user personas as well as ask meaningful questions in primary research. Here are some of our findings:
Now, with a general understanding of the blood-glucose monitoring process as well as the ICU infrastructure, my team needed to delve deeper and connect with our users and gain direct insights with them through primary research. While we had no yet identified all of our user groups, we knew nurses in the ICU would be the main users of our interface so thought interviewing them would be the most useful. Due to resources and time constraints we were not able to directly interview nurses, but fortunately our professors had enough knowledge to act as our mock nurses for interviews.
Here are some of the key questions we asked:
Some insights from our interview:
With our background research complete, my team and I now had some more context to begin identifying the different users of our interface. We learned that in the ICU each nurse is typically the care taker of 2-3 patients. Furthermore, several nurses usually consult a singular doctor who has a less intimate relationship with the patients but who still occasionally checks on them. Therefore, my team identified nurses and doctors as the two main user groups of our interface. My team also considered at home care-takers, but concluded that they were out of scope of our interface which would initially just be used in the ICU.
Further synthesizing on our research, my team and I brainstormed some of the main functional needs our interface would need to meet based on the user groups we identified. We constantly pulled from our secondary and primary research throughout the brainstorming session, trying to ensure we covered all the essential functionalities our interface would require in order to provide a seamless experience for our two user groups.
Here is what we came up with:
With lots of knowledge gathered about the audience, as well as their goals and their needs, my team and I decided to compile this information and create a user persona to represent our key audience segment. Our user persona helped us focus on addressing our users needs throughout the design process. We made sure to constantly reference our user persona throughout our project to verify our UI accomplished the tasks it needed to.
Meet Nurse Nelson, a nurse in the ICU who often works the night shift. He is determined to ensure the safety of all of his patients despite often being stressed and tired.
With our user persona created and functional needs solidified, my team and I decided to next look at the existing UI and evaluate where it was sufficient and where it fell short. By identifying what functional needs it failed to provide for, we could discover areas where the UI needed some upgrades.
To begin assessing the current UI, I performed a heuristic evaluation in order to uncover usability issues. I evaluated several heuristic principles including consistency, feedback, user control, and more. After performing the heuristic evaluation, I realized the current designs had a lot of room for improvement especially in areas like visibility and consistency.
Check out my heuristic evaluation of the current UIFollowing my heuristic evaluation, I performed a hierarchal task analysis in order to understand all the functionalities of the current UI and become familiar with the user pathways. By understanding the functionalities of the current UI I could later compare these to the functional needs by team identified earlier to see where the current UI was lacking.
After analyzing the pathways and functionalities of the current UI, my group and I were able to identify numerous areas of improvement we'd target during our redesign. While the current UI met some of the needs of our users we identified earlier, it lacked several of the functionalities we identified as necessary.
With our research and analysis complete, my team and I began to create initial wireframes. Throughout the design process we made sure to constantly reference our functional needs, especially those that were not met by the current UI, and ensure those needs were as satisfied as possible. Along those same lines, we continuously referenced our user persona in order to address the needs of our most important user group.
When a nurse or doctor first opens the web application they will enter a patients medical record number (MRN). Once successfully entered, the user will enter in patient's information which will be saved to the system. They also have the choice to change any of the drip settings and/or advanced settings which are populated with default numbers. All of the information will be saved to the system for the specific patient so users do not have to re-enter information next time. The system checks for errors (missing values, incorrect format of values) and notifies the user.
Once onboarded, the user is taken to the homepage which gives an overview of the patient's status. The user may then begin to take measurements. By selecting "Glucose Management" on the menu bar, users are taken to page where they can enter a patient's blood glucose level. The system will automatically calculate the insulin dosage and populate this field, but the field may be changed by the user. Warning icons appear next to fields the system detects as unusual. The user may hover over these icons for more information. If a user fails to address the unusual inputs, the system will notify them before they move to the next page. The user then has the option to ignore the message (assuming the information entered is correct), or go back and modify their inputs. Graphs displayed on the right give the user more context in order to determine if a measurement is unusual or reasonable.
The homepage is where users can get the quickest overview of the patient's status. The graphical overview shows the blood glucose measurement and insulin dosage administered for a 24 hour period. Users can select the calendar icon to change the date and hover over specific points for more detailed information. The data history presents a table with all the measurement history. Users can sort the data, search for a specific date, as well as modify the data but updating and deleting entries. Error checking pop ups prevent the user from accidentally deleting entires they did not mean to.
Users can choose the patient information tab on the menu bar to review and update information about the patient. The system also utilizes and alarm system to help users with time manages and to prevent lapses. The timer bar at the top shows the user how much time remains before the next measurement. The snooze count reminds the user how many times they have snoozed the alarm. When the timer runs out, a pop up will remind the nurse to take the measurement. Users can either address the alarm or snooze it, however they may only snooze up to 4 times. On the fifth alarm, the nurse must address the alarm or call for assistance. This prevents dangerous patient neglect. The system has several other pop up reminders to increase efficiency for the user. For example, after six hours of stable measurement, the system asks the user if they would like to increase time between measurements.
Designing my first UI was challenging but a lot of fun! From this project, and from this class in general, I realized how important it is in maintaining a user-centered approach when designing new products. It's essential to put yourself in the shoes of the users (which may consist of several different groups!) to truly understand what they need from the product you are designing. Interviews, surveys, and research in general are all key steps to gaining a more accurate perspective and should always be done before jumping into design. While the task seemed very daunting at first, ideas and pathways became more and more clear as I flushed out the functional needs of the users and identified exactly what this UI needed to accomplish. As an extension of this current UI, I hope in the future I can design a mobile app that supplements the desktop UI. The mobile app could allow nurses and doctors to keep track of all their patients at once since the desktop app only allows users to view one patient at a time.
