Mayv is a holistic, chronic pain management ecosystem. It delivers relief from the physical, emotional, and psychological burden of chronic joint pain. The company addresses these issues through a guided, thirteen-week pain management program, hemp supplements, online support groups, and additional digital resources. Our team was brought on to better understand the target market and craft a personal, holistic experience. The project scope covers the conceptualization of their mobile application.
January 2020 — May 2020
User Research, User Interfaces, User Experiences, Usability Testing
Team: Warren Lai (Designer), Rachel Lin (Designer), Kenny Yeung (Designer)
Extended Case Study
Why turn to alternative medicine for the treatment of chronic pain conditions?
Traditional medicine has largely failed patients with chronic pain conditions. There are no proven, sure-fire long term treatment plans.
01 User Research
Competitive Analysis
We looked into the medical app space to examine whether existing products had any alignment with our focus. This included research into tracking apps (symptoms, nutrition, exercise) and guided treatment programs (sleep, meditation, pain).
Users want to track their growth over time and receive motivation from the application.
Users seek connections and bonds with other members, even through anonymity. Applications that created and formed communities promoted continued growth and loyalty.
Users want to receive specialized, catered feedback based on their inputs, such as symptoms, logs, and surveys.
Users want to evolve with their disease over time and partake in new educational content.
Literature
We sought to understand how autoimmune patients discover and assimilate integrative medicine techniques into their lifestyles. We also wanted to understand if there were any physical limitations associated to these conditions for accessibility purposes.
Patients liked to be engaged by progress feedback reports and educational tips.
Designers need to be especially wary of dark design patterns in apps targeted towards disability (addiction, social anxiety, purchase patterns).
Patients weigh clinical treatments (drugs, surgical procedures) and alternative medicine (physical therapy, massages, acupuncture, CBT, CBD) equally.
Patients preferred easy, one-tap user interfaces as opposed to multi-tap or slider methods.
User Interviews
We conducted interviews with autoimmune patients from across the country via userinterviews.com. Through these conversations, we learned about their daily habits, and their personal experiences coping with chronic pain and flareups.
Information came from multiple sources, including articles, medical journals, social media, and TV shows.
Patients without strong support groups from friends or family reached out to online communities and forums.
Patients became fearful of pain and felt the need to control their environments in case of flare-ups.
Many felt uncertainty and anxiety regarding CBD. Where can I get it, how legal is it, what are its effects?
Patients are skeptical of mindfulness techniques, but are willing to give them a try.
Ultimately, the disease changes your personality.
02 Converging and Ideating
The team sought to utilize all of the learned findings, but needed to unify with the client’s goals before making any design decisions. We applied a framing exercise to work through constraints, solutions, and ultimate impacts to converge on a “How Might We” question and a centered design goal that we could continue to return to later in the project.
Alongside the client, we brainstormed solutions together, resulting in a list of potential features. Our session was structured around a problem map on the patient, which listed common issues that chronic pain patients faced and opportunities to aid them.
We defined the “core features”, which included:
Centralized Information: Providing a space where patients can explore alternative medicine with credible information. Patients can opt-in to different topics at any time, choosing to learn as they go.
Tools and Prompts for Self Reflection: Encouraging patients to convert their learnings into constructive habits they can apply in their lives. These lessons aren’t meant to be rushed through, but require introspection and assimilation.
Motivating Schedule / Regimen: Patients want to see results, and they want to see them fast. However, we wanted to encourage a schedule that paces out the program, and gives space for patients to digest the material.
Patient Self-Tracking: Patients can quickly log down information about their symptoms, triggers, and habits over time to stay informed on their condition.
Self-discovery of Insights: To complement self-tracking, patients can visualize their condition over time, and find trends and correlations. Visualizations are annotated to show appropriate events and can be superimposed with other conditions.
