Take Your Pills - GR1

• Observations & Interviews. Give a narrative of the three people that you observed and interviewed. Don't use their names. Don't identify the users by name, but do describe who they were. Each narrative should include a particularly interesting moment -- a breakdown or workaround that exhibits a feature of the problem you're aiming to solve.
• User Classes. Describe the user classes that you have identified, and their major characteristics.
• Needs & Goals. Describe the goals that you have identified, with reference to the observations you made.

Interviews

• Interview: patient 1

The patient interviewed is someone who is between twenty and thirty years old, extremely physically active, and leads a busy lifestyle with many components (such as in academia, lab, volunteer council, athlete leadership). The patient has an illness that involves suppressing flare ups of symptoms. In the home-setting, the patient has three different medications he must self-administer once a day. The daily “ritual” of self-medication usually takes place in the morning, where the patient wakes up, grabs a small bite to eat, then take the medications. Sometimes breakfast is skipped, and this does not happen; the patient likes to keep his medications in his backpack for cases like this, such that if he forgets to take them before leaving home, he can take them at work. The patient admits to having missed or almost forgotten to take medicines due to the busy lifestyle that he leads. The patient does not have trouble distinguishing between the three different medications, saying that “they all look different and the prescription bottle has the drug name on it”, and he has not made any other kinds of mistakes taking these medications. In the case where the patient has a flare up and becomes hospitalized, the doctor comes in at a set time for the patient to have his medicines and administers via IV or pill form. When asked for last comments on our problem statement, the patient notes that despite his busy lifestyle occasionally causing him to miss taking medications at the usual time, older people will definitely have more complications with their medications than younger people.

• Interview: patient 2

The patient interviewed is a female over the age 80 who is living by herself. She has had long history of Type II diabetes and hyperlipemia, and has record of heart attacks, so it is really important for her to take her daily medicines. The patient takes around 3 to 4 medicines everyday, not including daily calcium and multi-vitamin. Most of her medicines are taken once per day around dinner time, but one medicine must be taken twice a day. The patient said that she usually doesn't forget to take her medicines on a regular day where she would stay at home for most of the day. However, when she is eating out or visiting someone, it's a lot more likely for her to forget to bring or eat her medicines. The doctor has also instructed her to take one of the medicines one hour before she eats dinner,  another one with dinner and the rest after dinner. The patient said that she sometimes forgets to follow the doctor's instructions. If she misses any of her medicines before dinner, she would just take everything after dinner. Even though she is aware that this might affect the effectiveness of the medicines a little bit, but she does not really know how much the effect could be. Another problem the patient often faces is that she forgets whether she has taken her medicines for the day or not. She said that she would accidentally take a medicine twice within a time span of half an hour, because she just can't remember whether she has taken the medicine half an hour ago or not and wants to make sure that she doesn't miss her medicine.

• Interview: patient 3

The patient interviewed is between twenty to thirty years old, has a 9 to 5 very regular job and just about average physically active. The patient has allergy problem. So the medication that the patient regularly takes are vitamin, fish oils and allergy pills. The patient normally take the vitamin and the fish oil in the morning and take the allergy pill at night. Yet due to the fact that his allergy symptoms often varies according to the seasons or different condition, he takes his allergy pills at different time. The patient often forgets about his vitamin or fish oil when he is rushing to the office, and he wishes to have some sort of reminder to remind him to take the medication either before he goes to work or when he arrives at the office. He thought he will also be nice to have some sort of note taking feature on the app, which he can use it to record the progress or the condition or his allergy situation.

• Interview: doctor 1

The surgeon I interviewed is a female between forty and fifty. She has about fifty patients each day. She is concerned about the issue of patients not taking medication correctly and said it may cause serious consequences if the patients fails to take it correctly. She thinks it would be helpful to get the information about whether the patients have followed the instruction correctly, but she stresses that it would be even better if she can get direct feedback from the patients about the effectiveness of the drug. “A lot of times, our problem is that the patients cannot communicate with us directly, in a timely manner about the effectiveness of the medicine and whether it has any side effects.” She thinks getting feedback from the patients about the effectiveness of the drugs not only helps to treat the patient, but also helps the doctors to understand the disease better. “It would also be helpful to know whether the patient has gotten any better before they come to me again,” she adds. When asked about what information she wants to give the patients except the time and dosage of the medicine, she includes “the correct way to take it and its side effects.”

User Classes

• Doctors
  • Characteristics: middle age, very busy, has a lot of patients to deal with, very knowledgeable about disease and medicine
  • Needs and Goals:
    • want to know if patients have taken the medications correctly
    • want to know if the medications are effective or have any side effects
    • is interested about the progress of the illness
    • like direct feedback from patients a lot
• Patients
  • Characteristics: may have variable lifestyles to accommodate (ex: sedentary, athletic, active, busy), may have variable physical/mental/emotional capabilities, may have bad memory(old people)
  • Needs and Goals:
    • for the self-medication process to be quick and easy yet hopefully always correct
    • does not want having to take medication to interfere with lifestyle
    • wants medications to do what they are supposed to