NIHI

Pain Assessment App

Division
Doctor of Chronic Pancreatitis

Role
Lead Designer

Tools
AdobeXD, Illustrator

Duration
2 months (2021)

Overview

COMPAT-SF (Comprehensive Pain Assessment Tool)  is a paper questionnaire selected and developed by doctors in order to assess the severity of pain in order to prescribe the correct medication. In it’s current state, the questionnaire is an arduous experience for patient and not feasible for use in clinical practice.

I was part of a team of two designers and developers who were tasked to digitise the COMPAT-SF questionnaire particularly for chronic pancreatitis patients. The web app included a log in for patients, an overview to the tool, a profile page, 6 survey questions and an option to download the results of the survey.

We had 2 months to scope, plan and design a set of LoFi and HiFi wireframes as well as work alongside developers to deliver a final prototype for handover. We were also tasked to build a design library and a logo for COMPAT-SF to feature on the prototypes.

Output

  • User personas and desk research on chronic pancreatitis patients

  • User flow to blueprint the translation of a paper assessment to a digital one

  • Rapid design ideation and sketches with red dot voting

  • LoFi and HiFi wire framing responsive to mobile and desktop

  • Prototyping and handover package for developers

  • Logo design and design system for COMPAT-SF

  • Delivery of progress presentations for client and NIHI stakeholders

Impact

⏱️ Automated the user experience of a previously manual assessment / score calculation - saving time and effort for patient and doctor.

👌 Translating paper only to a web application allowed more patients to be able to access the assessment at any time.

Project Reflections

  • NIHI functions in a consulting model for healthcare professionals. Within this environment, advocating for user research was tricky. We were serving clients who were ‘experts’ on their patients and therefore felt they could represent their patients without consultation. While we advocated for user testing, we were not able to test with participants who closely represented end users. At handover, we noted that optimal user experience would require end-user specific testing and strongly advised our client to pursue this research when the next phase was financed.