Diabetes Prevention
How We Got Here
Healthcare can be a scary word because as a society we are taught to focus on health after an issue occurs instead of before a disease is acquired. Understanding your health could actually help place longevity in your life. Ignoring signs of symptoms of health or the lack of understanding what type of health issues can be avoided, could be the gap between getting on top of health issues before they form in your body. Society places a focus on looking good through weight loss, exercising, healthy eating, not smoking, or alcoholic drinking but you never understand the why of doing or not doing those things. If people don’t understand the importance of doing or not doing those activities, it’s easy for an individual to ignore the signs of preventable diseases. It’s important for the healthcare community to educate the community on these signs which can cause trouble later to your body. Diseases such as diabetes can be avoided if we take the time to perform the necessary steps to retain the knowledge and put the proper steps into action.
The design thinking process as it relates to my prototype focused on empathizing with end users, defining the end users health care concern which was diabetes prevention, create ideas to help bring awareness to this issue, create a prototype to bring a resolution to the healthcare issue, and test the prototype on the end users who identified the healthcare community problem. My solution was created around all of the processes in design thinking. The connection with the end users gave insight on understanding how different people of different backgrounds and ethnicity have similar experiences with this issue. The design thinking process also allowed me to create a process that can be used to help combat this issue.
There was one particular story from the diabetic end users that highlighted the need for my solution. During the initial interview, I asked the diabetic end user if she thinks she could ever control the disease enough and become non diabetic? She replied by stating, “ “I feel there is hope in beating the disease. If I truly work on discipline myself when it comes to making food choices and truly exercise like I should, it could definitely help level out my sugar levels. I’m just so stubborn when it comes to things and this body doesn't get up and go like it used to (laughs). I thank God for my children and my family for their love and support on my good and bad days. I don’t want to be a burden to anyone and I definitely don’t want to have to go to dialysis like some of the other patients that visit my doctor that has diabetes. I will continue to ask God to give me strength and help me overcome this illness.”
The one thing I would do differently is create one form for the tracking and logging of nutrition, glucose readings, and exercise. People have busy lives and the less they have to keep up with will create a more liking to an additional task to add to daily activities. I created 3 separate logs, and an information sheet during my prototype and test. Most of the end users stated the tracking materials were a little excessive to keep up with if they would add this to their daily routine after the prototype testing. Since the community is more web and app friendly, it would be more accessible to have created an app for all of the prototype information.
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