team project – spring 2024

Medipal — improving medical adherence through actionable tracking and scheduling

role
UI/UX Researcher
UI/UX Designer
team
Henry Pontzer
Paovsim Soeung
Steven Heng
Reina Perez
skills
User Interface Design
User Research
Figma Prototyping
timeline
2 Weeks
context
What is Medical Adherence?
Medical adherence (also known as medication adherence or medication compliance) refers to the degree to which a patient correctly follows medical advice and treatment plans prescribed by their healthcare providers. This involves taking medications at the prescribed times, dosages, and frequencies, and following through on recommended lifestyle and dietary changes.

Poor medical adherence accounts for an estimated 125,000 annual deaths among Americans, and costs the healthcare system $300 billion a year in emergency medical appointments and hospitalizations, as cited by heart.org. Many of these issues stem from people not understanding, and consequently not trusting their medications.
challenge
"Develop an innovative technology/app solution that enhances medical adherence among patients with chronic diseases, ensuring it is accessible and effective for diverse patient demographics."
solution
Hard facts through gentle reminders!
MediPal is a personalized medicine tracker that streamlines the tracking process while providing users with the agency to customize, learn about, and manage their medication to their own needs.
Actionable tracking
Medication reminders and tracking help users stay updated and consistent with their medications.
Designed in collaboration
w/ Henry Pontzer
Behavioral insights
MediPal prompts the user with a questionnaire whenever a medication is skipped, allowing for deeper insights on user behaviors and habits.
Designed in collaboration
w/ Henry Pontzer
& Paovsim Soeung
Information-rich calendar
Medication routines and day-by-day adherence insights are easily displayed in a calendar view.
In-depth medications
MediPal provides deeper insights and information on specific medications, such as skip history and interactions with other medications.
user research
Understanding the problem
We found that one big issue surrounding medical adherence was insufficient communication between patients and providers. High medication costs also disrupt medication frequencies.

On our journey to create a solution, we began by researching and understanding how people currently deal with and manage their medications. We found PatientsLikeMe — an online forum where people can share their experiences living with various medical conditions.
Our research showed us that a majority of users had trouble maintaining a large number of medications. From this, it seemed that a medication tracker was the way to continue with our project.
competitive analysis
How do current medicine trackers hold up?
We conducted a competitor analysis comparing other common medicine tracking apps. We focused on their medicine scheduling and reminding capabilities, as well as the level of quality of medicine information.
insight
Streamlining the way users interact with their medications
Through our research, we found that the biggest pain points among users were...
With this, we developed this question to guide us through the rest of this project:
HMW statement
"How might we improve user's understanding of their medications and empower them to adhere to their regimens?"
ideation
User flow
Our user flow focuses on our defined major pain points, ensuring that we design an experience appropriate for managing medicine regiments. We wanted our ensure that our user flow was streamlined and simple for users.
This user flow reflects how the user will navigate their schedule and explore their medications.
design
Ideating potential designs and features
The next step was to translate this research and synthesis into low-fidelity wireframes. The main features we wanted our app to have were medication reminders / information, color-coordinated medications, and an easily digestible in-app calendar.
Some of our low/mid-fidelity mockups.
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final deisgn
A personalized medicine tracking experience!
Through the use of reminders, customizability, and insights, we have created a deeply personalized medicine tracking experience. Highlighted below are some key features that make the app possible.
Flexible medicine reminders
No one likes being forced to do something, and this is all the more important when it comes to ones medications and personal health. Flexibility with taking medications gives personal control and agency to the user. MediPal provides reminders, not tasks.
Insightful tracking
Completion rings and cards are shown for both days and medications, giving users the opportunity to study and reflect on their habits regarding their routines and medications. Actionable changes begin here.
Customizability
Nicknaming personalizes the medications for the user, helping them remember what the medication is and what they actually do. Color customizability can be used with physical, color coordinated medicine bottles.
Medication history and statistics
Specific insights on a medication's adherence, history, and interactions gives in-depth information to the user, and even the users providers and support system to better improve their adherence and routine.
reflection
Whats next for MediPal?
Medical adherence is an issue that persists and will continue to persist, and the best we can do is to do as much research, testing, and understanding of the field of medicine as possible. Though our app tries to solve the glaring pain points of medical adherence, there are still many issues of medical adherence that we were unable to address. Medicine is, of course, a very expansive and studied field.

One major factor that affects medical adherence — which we couldn't fully address — is patient-provider connectivity. Providing users with a direct line to their provider could help users clear up the many confusing details about medicine, and is a step we could take in the future to improve MediPal. We also wanted to implement the ability to share medication regimens and statistics to trusted friends and family, which could provide users with a support system to help with their daily regimens.
Thanks for reading!
Feel free to check out the rest of my portfolio :)