One Step Ahead
Diabetes is tough, common and costly. But it can be well controlled by healthy eating, regular exercise and special medical treatments. We named our team "One Step Ahead" (OSA) because we want to help people control their diabetes before it gets out of control, and even help prevent more people from developing diabetes.
Timeline
2 months
Team
4 people
Tool
Figma, Webflow
Adobe InDesign
Role
User researcher
Web developer
01.
Project background
Healthy Living with Diabetes (HLWD) program is a 6-week workshop, provided by Wisconsin Institution for Healthy Aging (WiHA). However, Blacks comprise only 3% of HLWD participants, although 21% of Blacks have diabetes in Wisconsin.
As a result, HLWD participants severely underrepresent Blacks compared to other ethnic groups. So, our team was tasked to understand why this situation happened, and make the diabetes education better delivered within black communities.
The Challenge
How might we improve the reach of diabetes self-management education in Wisconsin, specifically among Black communities?
02.
Stakeholder interview
To better understand diabetes and how people feel about the HLWD program, we conducted 17 interviews with various stakeholders, including: pre-diabetics, diabetics, medical practitioners, HLWD facilitators and participants, etc.
Meanwhile, we also did several analogues study to learn about similar weekly programs, and attempt to understand chronic illnesses.
03.
Insight synthesize
🛠 Modality
- People want the workshop to be accessible based on their needs.
- Some participants struggle with the academic layout of the program.
💬 Discuss wellness
- Social influence and peer stories can inspire people's habits.
- People desire to talk about diabetes with ones who have similar experience.
💰 Financial
- Diabetes use a great deal of one’s money, time, and emotions, etc.
- People have a tremendous amount of other life stressors.
Opportunity 1
HMW tweak the modality of the workshop to be more flexible?
Opportunity 2 ⭐️
HMW create opportunities to discuss wellness in people’s daily life?
Opportunity 3
HMW help people save medical costs by improving wellness?
04.
Desk research
Podcast is a common and promising medium where people consume information.
- 75% US population is familiar with podcasts
- 80% Listening while doing housework or while commuting
- 24% US population listen to podcasts every week
- 69% Agreed that podcast ads made them aware of new products or services
05.
Select an idea
We brainstormed a dozen of ideas and narrowed down them through an impact-effort matrix. Finally, we landed on the podcast idea for the following reasons.
- Easy to distribute & access
- Low literacy requirement
- Cost effective
06.
Prototype V1
We first scripted some audios and created several 2-minute test episodes, topics include: One on One Interview, Sharing Stories, Success Strategies, Movement, Informational, Meditation, etc.
- The biggest concern: who would continue recording and posting podcasts?
- One well-liked concept was sharing stories from people through our podcast.
- We focused on this idea by eventually creating a voicemail hotline where people could leave a message with their story.
HLWD Podcast Channel
06.
Prototype V2
Based on the feedback we received, we created HLWD podcast channels on Youtube and SoundCloud to host all audios. Then, we also built a landing page as the hub to access those resources.
- Audios can be produced by the HLWD program or any user of this website.
- Audios are labeled by topics.
- Instructs users on how to share stories via hotline.
One Step Ahead Website
☎️ Voicemail
🎧 Texts
- Users text ”Podcast” to 888-599-3361
- Get a link to our SoundCloud with all 6 HLWD audio episodes
📅 Deliver schedule
- Deliver the 6 episodes coinciding with the schedule of the workshop, with the opportunity to expand.
- The content in each of the first 6 episodes compliments that week’s workshop content.
🙂 Journey maps
- Jon attends the HLWD Workshop. He receives business card with information and suggested listening schedule. After each workshop, Jon accesses the corresponding HLWD podcast.
- Jane finds the podcast online and is from WI. She enjoys the podcast and finds out about the workshop. So, she attends the HLWD Workshop.
07.
Feasibility & Viability
How would we continue to source stories and content?
- Crowdsourcing is a powerful tool
- Voicemail hotline
- Volunteers from the HLWD & community
- Professionals working with HLWD
How could HLWD/WIHA continue producing episodes?
- Our podcast episodes were created in a way that could be edited easily with minimal training.
- Audio editing can be outsourced on platforms such as Fiverr.
