Deepesh Sudhakar
DEEPESH
SUDHAKAR
SUDHAKAR
MS HCI- Interaction Design Practices (Mid)
Interaction Design
UI Prototype (Sketch)
Visual Design (Invision)
Program was launched in late 2017 to curtail addiction in Indiana. This initiative is one of the nation’s most comprehensive state-based responses to the addiction crisis and the largest led by any university.
How might we leverage technology and support systems to help cigarettes smokers manage their urges to rid of cigarette addiction?
-Was launched in late 2017.
-Goals are to curtail addiction in Indiana.
-This initiative is one of the nation’s most comprehensive state-based responses to the addiction crisis—and the largest led by a university.
Over 16 million Americans are currently living with tobacco-related diseases.
In the US, 113,100 people die from smoking related pulmonary diseases each year.
Various States have tried ban on sale of cigarettes
Federal Government has inctreased tobacco taxes
Awareness campaigns have been organized
Conducted 4 of the 9 interviews in total and conducted 3 hours of observation
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Using the Affinity Diagramming method, the team and I classified the findings and problems of their respective user groups. This method helped us segregate the problems based on age groups, challenges quitting, number/time of day for smoking. Further, we tried to formulate our problem statement based on the priority of the problems.
Based on our findings from the affinity diagram, the team and I were able to associate the traits to two user groups. One of that of a working professional and another one of a student. We took these personas and created an empathy map to better understand the user and the problem space, which helped us arrive at our problem statement.
How might we leverage technology and support systems to help cigarettes smokers manage their urges to rid of cigarette addiction?
The team and I participated in four rounds of brainstorming after which we narrowed down our solution based on the technological feasibility, to three design solutions solving the problem in three different ways.
It is of utmost importance to be empathetic with people who are suffering from addiction, and make them feel understood, accepted, and supported.
Features
Accountability partners
Consult with professionals
This solution provides a social platform where users can collaboratively come together and help each other quit smoking through emotional support and professional help.
A Mobile Application targeted to users who smoke cigarettes and/or are willing to quit.
Features
Health Insights/Reports
Tips to avoid smoking
From our interviews and observations, we found that some people smoke cigarettes unaware of hazardous health effects. This app aims to increase self-awareness to help them quit smoking.
This a wearable device which can be used by people having difficulties controlling their urges for smoking, and are willing to quit.
Features
Regulates nicotine
Vibrate/mild shocks
Notifications
We found that nicotine urges is the main difficulty for quitting. The band aims at controlling these urges. The band also helps the user mentally through the quitting process.
For our final design direction, the team and I decided to proceed with a solution which is a combination of the Buddy App and the Medi-care app. We wanted to leverage the benefit of both of these designs to create an effective solution. Although, the smart band seems to be an effective solution, it needs additional exploration to check its validity.
On understanding the key features of the Buddy app and the Medi-Care App, the team and I were able to identify the features that were required to go into the final design. The Above image shows the top features to be included in our final solution.
We designed a low-fidelity prototype to understand the user flow and placement of UI elements. We then tested our prototype with users using think aloud sessions.
We learned that:
•No place to track the missed input for smoking.
•Users are unable to add new friends to accountability partners.
•Health report on the dashboard is not clear.
Based on the the Low-Fidelity prototype and the learnings from our user tests conducted with the low fidelity prototype, the team and I designed a High-fidelity prototype.
To evaluate our designs and to understand the overall user experience of our application, the team and I used different testing and evaluation methods.
We performed three Think-Aloud sessions On our low fidelity prototype. We asked the users to perform the following tasks.
•Track smoked or craving data.
•Check the health insights .
•Check the accountability partner.
All three users could perform the smoke tracker button. We noted that users were confused at first on the claim reward section but figured it out by exploring more icons on the screen.
Heuristic evaluations was conducted on the high-fidelity prototype.
Our evaluation concluded that it follows
User control and freedom
Flexibility and efficiency
Visibility of system status
Recognition rather than recall
We identified that the App violates
Help and Documentation
Consistency and standards
For Cognitive walkthrough, we decided to test the usability of some of the most frequently used features in our application. We selected the following tasks to perform our cognitive evaluation and also we followed Spencer et al method to perform our evaluations:
• Log Cigarettes Smoked or Cravings
• Set goals for accountability partners
• View health reports in the app download it
• Make appointments to get professional help
The next steps when it comes to this design, we look forward to making the changes as per our findings from our usability testing. As for this project, we hope to review the complete UX Design process to research support groups and also look at the project through the lens of a medical professional. This would help us determine the success of such support systems on a mobile platform and also to accomplish the following:
•During the research phase, due to the widely studied area of cigarette smoking and the effects that follow, It was difficult to arrive at the problem statement. For which employing user data analysis methods and putting the user in the center of focus, such as in the empathy map made the process easier.
•The ideation phase served to be very effective, showcasing the power of team work were we wore able to brainstorm 10s of ideas. On the other side the large number of ideas meant, dropping few viable concepts to maintain the team dynamic.
•Most Importantly the user testing and evaluation process made us review our complete design process, stressing on the nature of user-centered design and iterative process.