UX DESIGN AT DEXCOM
Dexcom
TLDR
Dexcom aims to help people with diabetes with their continuous glucose monitoring system. This power system leads to an overwhelming amount of data in the hands of the user with not much utility. In 10 weeks, I worked to design a dashboard that gave their users meaningful insights about their diabetes metrics. This won the recognition of their leadership from Dexcom leadership and staff.
Role: Product Designer
Skills: User Research, Visual Design, User Testing
Timeline: 10 weeks
Designers: Allison Patil, Tracey Huang, Sam Huang
Introduction
For 10 weeks, I worked in a team of 3 at The Design Lab as part of the Diabetes Design Initiative. We worked with Dexcom to identify user pain points to create their online website experience.
What is a CGM system?
A device that attaches to a patient's body and continuously reads glucose levels every 5 minutes, giving real-time readings to a receiver or smart device.
The Problem
A large portion of the population suffers from type I diabetes every day. For a majority of people, we take many things for granted that people with diabetes need to think about such as meals and exercise. Through user interviews, we found that people with diabetes typically don't have a method to understand their glucose levels deeply in relation to their daily activites.
The Solution
Provide people with type 1 diabetes with a platform that allows them to freely browse the correlative relationships between their events and blood glucose levels.
How can we...
How can we leverage data to empower Dexcom users by giving them meaningful insights resulting in better diabetes management?
Hypothesis
People have a “black-box” understanding of the correlative relationship between their decisions and their glucose levels.
Design Process
User Research + Insights
We held 5 user interviews with the goal of understanding the data the users value the most. We wanted to learn about the specific instances where they found creative ways to understand and analyze their data.
Personas
From the interviews, we synthesized the data into three personas that represent the reoccurring user cases.
Sally, 27
When I view my glucose data after a run, I want to see how my run has changed my glucose levels, so I can continue to exercise while staying in range.
Bailey, 23
When an unexpected event occurs, I want to note how it affects my glucose level so I can plan better for the future.
PJ, 42
When I check my glucose levels for the day, I want to better understand how my body reacts to different foods, so I can make sure I am able to lower my A1C and increase time in range.
Dashboard Hierarchy
After listing out the features that we wanted to include in our platform, we knew that we needed to create a basic flow that shows the site hierarchy.
Home: Contains your metrics and your chart
Food: Input your food intake and analyze your glucose
Exercise: Input your activity and analyze your glucose
Notes: Input your unique events
Initial Sketches
Home
Exercise
Food
Notes
User Testing + Iterations
After creating the initial screens and getting feedback from our mentors from Dexcom and the Design Lab, we decided that we were ready to create a prototype and run user testing.
After creating the initial screens and getting feedback from our mentors from Dexcom and the Design Lab, we decided that we were ready to create a prototype and run user testing.
Iterations
Old Home
New Home
Average Glucose Graph
Daily Glucose Graph
Old Food Page
New Food Page
Final Designs
Home
Allows people with diabetes to see the weekly status of their glucose levels.
Food
Allows people with diabetes to understand how their food intake affects their glucose levels.
Exercise
Allows people with diabetes to understand how their exercise affects their glucose levels.
Notes
Allows people with diabetes to note any events that took place which would affect their glucose levels.
Food walk-through
Exercise walk-through
Notes walk-through
Full walk-through
Learnings + Impact
After we created the fully functional prototype, we were able to present it to the director of design as well as 30+ employees at Dexcom. We were able to gain approval and critiques. Through this experience, I was able to learn about design in the medical field and working on a team in general.
WHAT I LEARNED
1. How to design user research so that it is strongly aligned with the eventual deliverable of the project. It is important to run user interviews and usability tests with the user goals in mind.
2. How to leverage storytelling to convey our design process to different stakeholders.
WHAT I WOULD DO NEXT TIME
1. We should have a clear timeline and goals before we start our process. This would ensure that the designers and the managers are on the same page.
2. We were given access to great designers and employees at Dexcom and next time we should place better habits to ensure that we are able to maintain good communication and get more guidance outside of the weekly check-ins.
Impact
