Project background
Individuals with M.S. and Oncology often have issues with centralized pain. Studies show that having chronic conditions can cause you to focus more on negative words and experiences.
Goal
A therapeutic engaging activity for patients with M.S. and oncology to reframe their emotions in order to stop concentrating on the negative.
My role
Senior Product Designer
Visual design
UX flow mapping
Motion direction
User research synthesis
Team
Product Managers
Engineers
Science
Legal team
Regulatory team
QA
Timeline
March 2023 - August 2023
03/23 - 04/24 Discovery and research
04/23 - 07/23 Concept testing
07/23 - 07/23 UI and dev handoff
Users see two overlapping words—one negative, one neutral or positive and tilt their phone toward the neutral/positive color. This helps shift focus from negativity and encourages balanced emotions over time.
As the user progresses, the levels become more advanced. There are 5 difficulty levels to keep the users engaged.
Onboarding
There is a learning curve to the activity because of that users found onboarding very useful and important.
How does it help the patient
The activity featured in this app is specifically designed to help users regain control over their attention, allowing them to flexibly shift their focus away from negative words, thoughts, and past experiences.
How it started - early exploration
Early design explorations relied on competitive analysis and science team input. Initial options were often too complex or didn't fully fulfill science requirements.
In collaboration with science and research, we arrived at this solution.
A patient would see two overlapping words, and they are asked to recognize a positive word and tilt the phone in that direction, allowing them to shift their focus away from negative words, thoughts, and past experiences.
Iterations
Adaptive difficulty
Adaptive difficulty L1
Different contrast
Different capitalization
Contrasting typefaces
Adaptive difficulty L2
Moving text
Adaptive difficulty L3
Different orientation and motion of text
Color blindness
I also ran all color combinations through color blindness plugin. Based on the image below the most consistent version is the one at the top. It also passed the accessibility rating
Accessibility
Based on the feedback I received from testing and the dev team I iterated on levels and changed some of the styling like weight, opacity and color.
Outcomes
The clinical study ran for 4 weeks
Breast cancer participants - 20
MS. participants - 9
Most participants perceived a variety of benefits, including improved condition, reduced physical symptoms, distraction from negative thoughts, and relaxation, though some participants were unsure of the long-term effects and desired clearer explanations of the benefits in the app.
“It could be placebo but I swear the neuropathy in my feet hasn’t bothered me as much in the past couple of weeks.”
“Since chemo, my brain will select a word that maybe isn’t correct, like hospital instead of hotel, and I didn’t do that so much during the four weeks using it.”
“Maybe add a swiping option if you have hand tremors like me.”