Octave Bioscience

Providing Care between Visits

Type: Zero to One | Role: Lead UX Designer | Design: Mobile, Service | Duration: 6 Months

Octave Overview Cover.png

THE ASK

Reimagine Care Management for Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a complex disease but Neurologists and their MS patients only have visits that are 6 months apart. Neurologists feel blind to what is going on while MS Patients are unsure when to escalate issues.

The value proposition was to provide care between those visits to

  • assist the overworked Neurologists

  • get a pulse of their MS patients between visits

  • summarize the collected data & info for use at the 6 month visits

BUSINESS GOALS

Provide Value to both Patients and Neurologists

Value to patients provided access to their data while value to neurologists gave access to their patients.

App & Human Service to address MS complexities

MS is a disease that’s hard to decipher from its symptoms and required a MS Nurse with the App.

First Building Block of a MS Data Platform

The underlying goal was to build the data platform so the collected data had to be clean and consistent.

MY ROLE

Founding designer who led the overall process from discovery to launch for mobile & service design

Design Lead

Baselined many major product decisions with COO

Provided leadership and guidance to the visual designer (who joined later)

Product Designer

Designed solutions through user flows, wireframes, etc

Collaborated with Engineering through Sprints

UX Researcher

Planned & conducted patient
& neurologist sessions

Synthesized insights to drive product decisions

Service Designer

Online & offline process between App & MS Nurse

Onboarding experience for the MS centers and their patients

Model-v2.png
Mobile App.png

Patient App

The mobile app served as the self-service touchpoint for the Person with MS to let the team know what was going on between their visits. We focused on the following three areas

  1. Medication Tracking

  2. Symptom Tracking

  3. Bridge for Care Partner Service

Mobile App: Medication Tracking

USER GOAL

People with MS want a private and efficient way to track their medication adherence so that they can show their progress to people they care about.

Snippet of Med Tracking Design Process

  • Supporting Med Schedules

    Work through the different type of meds for injectables, orals, and infusions

  • Medication User Flows

    Guide decisions on the med tracking flow while accounting for late recordings, etc

  • Injection Tracking Wireframes

    Align the team on the depth of info to track through explorations

Med Tracking Final Mocks

I created the high fidelity mockups and prototypes detailing the desired user experience

DMT-update-1.png

Mobile App: Symptom Tracking

USER GOAL

People with MS want to know which symptom changes they should pay attention to so that they can respond appropriately.

Snippet of Symptom Tracking Design Process

  • Standardize Symptom & Severity Thresholds

    Work with multiple MS Nurses on a standardized list to determine the app’s recommendations.

  • Work through Overlapping Symptoms

    Align on flows when multiple symptoms and severities may be present.

  • Conduct User Interviews & Concept Testing

    Understand People with MS and their mental models and whether the concepts resonate with them.

Symptom Tracking Final Mocks

I created the high fidelity mockups and prototypes detailing the user experience

Symptoms v5.png

Mobile App: Bridge for Care Partner Service

USER GOAL

People with MS want a way to communicate with Octave’s MS Nurse in a mode that their situation calls for.

Pamphlet.png

Snippet of ‘Nurse Service Bridge’ Design Process

  • Cadence of Check-Ins

    Balancing app & scheduled nurse check-ins to reduce overlap and check-in fatigue.

  • Nurse Follow-up based on Situations

    Interconnect app to service to ensure the nurse is kept informed and follows up, if needed.

  • Facilitate Check-In Workshop

    Co-create the topics to be covered with patients at the biweekly check-ins.

Nurse Service Bridge Final Mocks

I created the high fidelity mockups and prototypes detailing the user experience

Care Cycle-Bridge-3.png

Patient Report

While the MS Nurse and the App were useful for the time period between visits, the 30 minute Neurologist visit every 6 months was crucial.

We needed to make sure the data collected in those 6 months was summarized and used for informed decision-making at the visit.

Snippet of Patient Report Design Process

  • Quick and Dirty Storyboards

    Align on the ‘moments that matter’ to stitch together the experience of bringing the report and ensuring it’d be used.

  • Align on Success Critieria

    Created the criteria to align the product team on our end goal for the report and constraints that we were working with.

  • Neurologist Concept Testing

    Tested the Summary Report concepts with Neurologists to ensure the data points and summary resonated.

Report Summary Final Mocks

I created the high fidelity mockups for handover to development

Report v3.png

Outcomes & Reflections

It’s definitely rewarding to work on a project that has such great impact on people living with an incurable disease. Being able to listen to their stories and feel their excitement when we explain the program & show them the prototype brings meaning and purpose to my work as a designer.

It was released to a research study group in the desired timeframe of 6 months. As the program has scaled, it has proven to show value with 92% of all patients remaining engaged with the program.

In this project, my role as a designer was not only to design a single touchpoint (such as the App), but rather, to design the process and experience of the entire system. This constituted many different touch points and the “in-between” spaces that intersect/build on top of each other. 

It was heartening to celebrate our work by being the finalist in Fastcompany’s Innovation by Design Awards 2023 and a winner in the UX Awards 2024.

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