Charmr: Interaction and Visual Design
by AlexaThe next challenge after concepting was to prove that this concept could actually work by fleshing out the essential screen flows.
The displays on leading insulin pumps today are the size of PDA screens and use a number of hard keys for navigation. Was it even realistic to create an adequate, easy-to-understand interface using a 2 x .75 inch touch-screen half the size of my Nokia N73’s screen?
Dan Saffer and I began the interaction design process by examining the options and screen content in existing devices. Identifying what our participants actually used, we sought out the “essence” of the insulin pump.
The “Ah-ha!” moment for me was recognizing that the interface that most type 1 diabetics today are interacting with is nothing more than a simple syringe.
All there is to this “interface” is:
- A way to select the amount of insulin you need (either by dialing it in or by withdrawing the appropriate amount from a vial), and
- A way to deliver the insulin (which provides clear feedback that it’s working: seeing the insulin disappearing into your body and the feeling of pressing the plunger makes you feel in control).
The rest of the details are dealt with in the mind.
As one of the barriers to adopting pumps today is perceived complexity, our goal became to create an interface that is no more intimidating than dialing in your insulin needs on a pen. Additionally, the device needed to provide just enough “smarts” to take away true mental burdens (like calculating your insulin dosage using your carb-insulin ratio), while keeping the user in control.
With these principles guiding us, we delved into the interaction design details: What features should the Charmr have? What feature will be used the most (dosing)? Which buttons would be soft (most of them) and which hard buttons we would need (a back button)? What is the minimum button size for a hand-held touch-screen device (many kiosks use 16mm square, whereas the iPhone uses considerably smaller, 9mm square buttons)? Which information should be shown on which screens to support particular tasks?
We also spent a bit of time discussing what kind of imagery would make the best ambient display of status (the mood ring screen). Amy Tenderich told us that one of diabetics’ greatest struggles is with guilt. They look at the numbers and feel guilty all the time. Thus, the ambient display needs to visually represent your status without assigning “moral value” to high or low blood sugar — the way a thermometer might show blue or red; neither is inherently bad.
We considered virtual pets, lava lamps, color abstracts, weather, and simply a personal/family photos theme (because it’s family or a particular goal that often motivates people), and finally concluded that the device should offer multiple themes and allow the user to choose what motivates them.
Finally, I developed a skin for the interaction design, striving to make it compelling and modern, while avoiding both “medical device blue” and the iPhone look and feel. The user could customize both the themes and the skins to their tastes, and perhaps even download more skins and themes online.
With the screen designs as well as a rudimentary industrial design concept completed, we put together an Experience Blueprint (4mb pdf), then it was time to tell the story of the product.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at 10:36 am and is filed under Charmr Project, Experience design, Interaction Design, Interface design.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
This post is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
August 14th, 2007 at 10:41 am
[...] come up with. My next post will talk about this process. Once we narrowed down to an idea, we created the visual and interaction design to really flesh out that concept, then a movie to explain the [...]
August 14th, 2007 at 11:02 am
[...] Team « Charmr: Interaction and Visual Design Charmr: Diabetes Management Research — There’s No Vacation from Diabetes [...]
August 14th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
You guys have great concept here. As designers, though, why use such a graphics-heavy outsized pdf that keeps hanging up on me?
I have a question, as well. In your movie, you show the user plugging the device into a Mac computer. I can tell you from experience, if you actually intend to make it both Mac and PC compatible, this thing has a definite future. Many diabetics that I have met REALLY want to use their PC-compatible only devices with their Macs and are forever foiled by the thoughtlessness of companies that don’t see a market for Mac-compatibility. Let me put it this way: if I had a nickel for every person who ever said “hey, does this meter/pump/software work with a Mac?” I’d be rich. Love the design, love the concepts, and on behalf of the diabetic on-line community (not that I’m an official representative), THANK YOU for listening and caring about producing/concepting a (potentially) great product.
August 14th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
[...] some time to check out what the amazing folks at Adaptive Path have put together, in the spare time none-the-less. AP has come up with a device concept to improve [...]
August 14th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
This is really fantastic, great job! I don’t have diabetes, but a device like this, so well designed and so well integrated into a life, makes me wonder if in the future it will be possible to also have health monitoring devices for the general populace.
Talk about preventative medicine. I work out and eat healthy and yet it’s hard to know if I’m making healthy choices. It’s hard to monitor yourself, understand the signals from your body, keep track of choices day after day. And it’s hard to correlate all of it into patterns so I can make better decisions.
This is really inspiring work. Thanks for sharing!
August 14th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Sarah–it’s not meant to be Mac only. Just used that for the product shot. Ideally, it would be Mac/PC or perhaps just a web application/service to track and store data.
Sorry about the PDF–several image-rich files in there.
August 14th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
My job requires me to travel alot on airplanes. How will this device pass security and the fact that wireless is not allowed on a plane.
August 14th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
I have been a type 1 diabetic for 37 years. I started on needles and now use a pump. Are you aware of the problem of insulin absorption? I can not leave an insertion set in one place more then three days (if I’m lucky) before it no longer absorbs the insulin and my blood sugars start going out of whack. I have had instances where I have had to move my insertion site three times in one day to find a place that will work. That would be very expensive with a device like this unless it was made to be reinserted. Another problem is the rate of delivery. Do you plan on having square wave or dual wave delivery? I find that giving a large amount of insulin will cause the site where the insulin is injected to stop absorbing much more quickly then giving the required insulin over a longer period of time. Foods high in protein require longer delivery times then carbohydrates. I already mentioned the problem with airports and airlines in a previous comment. I really like your idea but…
August 15th, 2007 at 5:28 am
I really like this, but as a type 1 diabetic and mother of two small boys, the first thing I thought of when I saw it was “Why didn’t they put the cord loop on the other end?” (the end that isn’t the cap) All it would take is one quick yank and you’d lose your pump controller…but it’s still better than 23 inches of pump tubing being yanked on and caught on things. The simplicity of your design is just beautiful.
August 15th, 2007 at 8:32 am
I am sure you guys are working on another iteration. In addition to some comments above, I also think if you really want to solve the issue, it should be in today’s context. The design is great, but why a design that’s not feasible today, the problem exists today, why not design something in today’s contraints.
This is not to say your work is not great, it is but it’ll just remain a design project this way and not a real solution. You can actually create a ‘open source’ design here and let a medical company pick it up and build on it.
August 15th, 2007 at 9:16 am
While not a diabetic a couple of points:
1. We CAN test of a variety of blood levels non-invasively (ie PKU, O2 & CO2 sats) not to mention hard core exercise ppl can get monitors for a lot of body indicators. Therefore why not focus on non-invasive monitoring, say, through a wristband.
2. If we can use patches for digoxin, nicotine and birth control, that may be another way to administer insulin in some cases. If not, then some other more reliable pump system (noting the issues above with pumps)
3. Is EVERYONE aware there is a TRANSPLANT protocol available (and has been for 15 years) for Type 1 Diabetes? It is called ‘Edmonton Protocol’
4. Recently there was some new work (it will be a while) that showed that administration of a specific neuropeptide into the pancreas of a diabetic rat caused overnight production of insulin which lasted 1 month.
Better monitoring and administration of manufactured insulin today is the goal…long term should be to get people off the constant regimen.
August 15th, 2007 at 9:20 am
Nice ideas, but a bit outside the practicality of current technologies. Here are the problems as I see them: batteries, batteries, batteries.
1) Battery life for the control device. I think that a necessary battery life would be at least a year between replacement (yes, it must have a replaceable battery), with charge life in excess of 24 hrs per charge over that life.
Two things are going to be major draws on electrical power — the use of the graphical display, and the wireless connection to the sensor and pump patch. I’m not sure if Bluetooth would prove to be too power-hungry a wireless technology to use, but there are alternatives, like ZigBee. You can mitigate the wireless connection draw on the power my limiting it to longer intervals of time between querying the sensor/pump patch, but that gets in the way of the continuous display. I suspect that even waiting a minute between samplings is going to disrupt the user experience — who is going to enter a command and wait a minute before checking to see the impact of that command? The display power draw can be mitigated by using a low-power technology (like OLED), but I’m not at all sure that such a display technology is amenable to touch-screen control.
2) Battery power for the pump/sensor patch. This is going to require a lot more power than the control device, and the patch will have to include its own control device to manage operation in the event the wireless remote is lost, broken, or too far away to connect. But there is existing battery technology to address the situation here, in the form of an implantable high-capacity battery, that can be recharged nightly in some manner or other — I’m not sure if wireless recharging through the skin is practical, or if a recharging terminal would have to be accessible. A more desirable solution would be a flexible thin battery as part of the patch, but I don’t believe that we possess such technology at this point in time, nor is there anything on the horizon that I am aware of.
And until you can get around the issue of liability risks for a medical device, Apple is not going to be interested in such a thing. I read somewhere that a long time ago, Steve Jobs was approached by a group of hospital executives trying to get Apple to make a tablet computer for use in hospitals. After due consideration, the project was declined, due to the liability risks in making such a product. There is no benefit (and considerable risk) for Apple in going into the medical device field. Existing glucose monitor makers reap large profits from the sale of strips and needles, and the devices are necessary losses to support those other markets. Apple would have no such revenue from insulin patches, and it would be crazy for them to get into such an enterprise. Same thing is true for any other electronics manufacturer. Some sort of a tie-in with a drug company is needed, and all the players are too large to consider such allegiances, preferring to go it on their own.
August 16th, 2007 at 10:30 am
As someone who’s been a type I diabetic for 14 years, I love how this looks. I have not yet moved to a pump because the value of doing so is not clear to me — I am comfortable using syringes, and without integrated monitoring the current crop of pumps just don’t give me much perceived benefit. If you can get an integrated monitoring/dosing system this convenient to market, I for one would absolutely be interested.
August 16th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Wonderful design! I would love one of these now. I am the parent of a three year old diagnosed at age two. I am sure that she will greatly appreciate your efforts to make her new life easier in so many ways.
August 17th, 2007 at 6:24 am
[...] Charmr: Interaction and Visual Design [...]
August 18th, 2007 at 6:32 am
I think it’s great that they designs are comming our way.
I currently use an insulin pump and the results are great so fat.
I want you all to know that the current continious montoring is not in real time! IV tried both Medtronic systems and the results I attained with this system were not as great as expected. I detected hypo’s 10-15 minutes before it told me that I was hypo and the same happened with high blood glucose levels! The sensors are big and bulky and very expensive! Pump supplies are expensive enough.
I also believe that it causes one to fiddle to much and therefore you spend the entire day checking what your Blood Glucose level is. At the moment I test before meals, 2 hours after meals and im not complaining… IV attainted my best HBA1C yet and exercise is no longer a problem with a temporary basal rate function.
One can always unplug their pump for up to 2 hours for other activites but I do believe that new designs like this one are great and very necessary!
It’s nice to see a new design but I think that too much time has been spent on resdesigning the device and not enough time developing the actual technology. For a system like this to be effective, it needs to be real time glucose monotoring, not a delayed reading.
Looking forward to seeing more developments on this!
August 21st, 2007 at 1:57 am
I would like to complement you on the work you are doing. I have been using a pump for 6 years, and have been very pleased with the results. There are a few things I would like point out: during the entire time I have been using my pump, I have never used the carb-insulin ratio. Perhaps it is just me, but I have gotten satisfactory results by testing my blood sugars only. Also, given the fact that there are so many political correct Americans (I am not an American) I suggest you use Type 1 diabetes and not Type 1 diabetics.
August 23rd, 2007 at 1:59 pm
My daughter is 14 - she has had Type One Diabetes for 9 years. Diabetes is a demoralizing disease that affects everyone involved, foremost the person who has it.
My daughter has been on a pump for more than half her life! I am a UI designer by profession, and while our chosen brand of pump has made improvements over the years, it is still a long way from being intuitive or clever. And damn the no-Mac compatibility issue!
You guys are onto something. Let me add one thing though…teenagers are notoriously negligent in their diabetes management, frequently jeopardizing their health and life trying to pretend they don’t have the disease. Good, discreet design of a product that encourages ease of management may tackle this niche which currently has parents and medical professionals hoping for the best but often dealing with a much less rosy reality.
August 30th, 2007 at 1:19 am
[...] en savoir plus [...]
September 9th, 2007 at 5:37 am
[...] principles’ vastgesteld. Pas hierna startten de ontwikkelaars met brainstormen over het design. Het filmpje laat het voorlopig resultaat zien. Van mij mag de Charmr gebouwd worden! [...]
September 9th, 2007 at 6:02 am
[...] principles’ vastgesteld. Pas hierna startten de ontwikkelaars met brainstormen over het design. Het filmpje laat het voorlopige resultaat zien. Van mij mag de Charmr gebouwd worden! [...]
September 17th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Charmr has Great design for a first generation product but let’s first finish designing and proving the technology being supported. I use the MM pump with Sensor, the sensor is a first generation item. Improvements are being planned and will be presented, in time. There are companies working on battery design that will and can deliver the support that your design might require. I see great progress and support for your ideas and I would hope that a company will find a way to use them soon. Diabetes knows nothing about age groups as there are very young, much older, those with good eye sight and those who are blind. Diabetes has no limits and knows no boundaries. The best of Luck to you.
September 19th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
I first saw this when Peter Merholz showed the video in Minneapolis last week. As someone who works in the interactive marketing/experience design field, it was refreshing to see a medical device design that actually took into consideration the person who uses it. My son was recently diagnosed with Type I diabetes and I hope we can see something like this in the future for him. The devices currently on the market seem very clunky. In fact, our babysitter, (also a Type I diabetic) recently took OFF her pump in favor of shots because she wanted to experience the freedom of not wearing her pump. My husband and I went to a presentation at Medtronic to hear about their latest and greatest. After seeing the Charmr concept, it was extremely disappointing. Yes, the advances are exciting - but let’s not only make diabetes management better, let’s make diabetics lives better. I would love to see a collaborative effort between Medtronic and Adaptive Path.
September 30th, 2007 at 4:52 am
Charmr, a laudable Adaptive Path R&D project
Challenged by an open letter that diabetes patient Amy Tenderich wrote to Steve Jobs, the American experience design consultancy Adaptive Path developed Charmr, an experience design concept to project how insulin pumps and glucose meters might work …
November 27th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
[...] Original Article: from Adaptivepath Blog [...]
January 23rd, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Nice to look at but the proof of the pudding is in the eating so user testing is needed. Many diabetics have eye-sight problems so this deserves special attention. Alternative layouts should be considered, including I think some 3D effects making it palpable, and an audio interface with some beeps and a timer. Make it more a crutch to lean on than a screen to consult with.
Possibly integrate with sensor and ipod using modernd radio chips (called rfid i think)?
Suggestion: Why not team up with diabetics consumer organisations to see if it really works?
They might then distribute at low cost to make more people adhere and get better and cheaper quality care.