Designing for Care - newly diagnosed patients

[ZoeF]

Hello,

I am a student graphic designer at Portsmouth University currently undertaking a live group project to find new ways of improving the experience of transitioning through care stages, and our subject area is newly diagnosed individuals with diabetes. We are looking to create a system/product which would be provided at the beginning of the diagnosis that could encourage more proactive thinking.

The most important question we are looking to answer is: How could the process of being newly diagnosed have been made easier for you and/or your family members, and how or why?

I was wondering if anyone would like to contribute their feelings before, during and after diagnosis?
Also if there were any extreme lifestyle changes that had to be made, both by you and/or family members?

No personal information will be disclosed, we are only looking to gain a further understanding of the process and how it can be improved.

Many thanks

Zoe

 

[NoCrbs4Me]

The best thing for newly diagnosed diabetics? Have them join this forum.

 

[catapillar]

What kind of diabetes? The information & care experience may well be different between type 1 & type 2.

Who are you trying to encourage proactive thinking from? The patient?

 

[TorqPenderloin]

As @NoCrbs4Me mentioned, joining this forum was the most valuable thing I did after my diagnosis.

The problem: filtering out content from members that does more harm than good.

The solution: a support group that somehow quantifies each member’s ability to help and contribute. Basically, the “eBay” of diabetes forums where feedback is exchanged between members.


While the “Likes received” counter attempts to achieve this, I find it to be a far-from-accurate way of measuring a member’s knowledge and helpfulness.


Long story short, if you could create the equivalent of a Match.com for diabetics to seek and offer support from one another I think that would be incredibly beneficial (and possibly lucrative). However, one of the biggest barriers would be monitoring these conversations to avoid any sort of liability as the third-party.

Perhaps, as a member is increasingly rated as "helpful" they are "matched" with more and more people. When a member is nothelpful they are culled from the cue of offering support. Uber is also built around this model where a driver and passenger are rated and the poorly rated people are eventually removed from the system.

 

[ZoeF]

What kind of diabetes? The information & care experience may well be different between type 1 & type 2.

Who are you trying to encourage proactive thinking from? The patient?

We're looking into both type 1 & 2 with the idea of creating something that would be more specific to the needs of the patient rather than generalised as we know the adjustments would likely be different, so experiences from people with either type would be greatly appreciated! Yes proactive thinking from the patient, but we're looking at how they think this could be more encouraged and how transitioning though the diagnosis could be improved for the benefit of this.

 

[ZoeF]

As @NoCrbs4Me mentioned, joining this forum was the most valuable thing I did after my diagnosis.

The problem: filtering out content from members that does more harm than good.

The solution: a support group that somehow quantifies each member’s ability to help and contribute. Basically, the “eBay” of diabetes forums where feedback is exchanged between members.


While the “Likes received” counter attempts to achieve this, I find it to be a far-from-accurate way of measuring a member’s knowledge and helpfulness.


Long story short, if you could create the equivalent of a Match.com for diabetics to seek and offer support from one another I think that would be incredibly beneficial (and possibly lucrative). However, one of the biggest barriers would be monitoring these conversations to avoid any sort of liability as the third-party.

Perhaps, as a member is increasingly rated as "helpful" they are "matched" with more and more people. When a member is nothelpful they are culled from the cue of offering support. Uber is also built around this model where a driver and passenger are rated and the poorly rated people are eventually removed from the system.

Thanks for your reply! So you feel that being able to talk to people who can relate to the same experiences has benefitted being a newly diagnosed patient? That's great to know as this is something we can input into our design process! A match.com idea would be interesting, but I agree this would have to be carefully monitored.