WHAT PEOPLE DO:
Being diagnosed with a diseased is overwhelming. Often, a new patient / caregiver is too overwhelmed and apprehensive to ask her doctor or pharmacist all the questions she has about her prescriptions in the moment. Instead, she tends to turn to Google afterwards, but a vast sea of results makes it difficult to prioritize which articles to read, who to listen to, and essentially, what to worry about. Regardless of where she ends up, drug information pages proved to be universally dense walls of text inaccessible to the layman, and oftentimes triggered more confusion and anxiety than they provided knowledge.
WHAT WE PROPOSED:
Understanding the mental process patients go through when learning about a new drug (and oftentimes, corresponding diagnosis) was crucial to making information more accessible and less scary. As it turns out, context was really what was missing - the facts are presented in a way that pharmacists or lawyers might have felt was best, but is actually wasn’t how a patient needed to digest information. We put CVS' CBM data to work for the end user, bubbling up key pieces of information that might arise in a one-to-one conversation with a doctor, such as which other people like her on are this medication, who's on the generic version, how many users are actually reporting side effects, and what the reported severity is of specific side effects is if/when it pops up. Thinking about our technology as a proxy for that conversational, human exchange helped us design a solution that was built around the user, not pharma companies.
The desire to understand and feel in control of one’s health spans all ages and levels of education - our visual language needed to be universally intuitive, accessible, and respectful. Our initial sketches actually even visualized a user-centered data display. We quickly abandoned that approach, but maintained the humanity in our narrative and tone. Because we were transitioning from a text-based content approach to one that was more more accessible and visual, a close partnership with visual design was a necessity. This project saw me camped out in our visual designer’s office, sketching and gathering visual inspiration to test and explore together.
This project was particularly meaningful to me because it had the potential to bring individual users something beyond utility, or surprise & delight. This project was about supporting people at their most vulnerable, and I am proud to have been a part of it.