The elina app is designed to provide support for individuals in the tracking and managing of long-term pain
Anyone living with long-term pain carries it on their own. From time to time, they seek advice and support from face to face consultations with their doctors, physiotherapists, and other carers - often without the benefit of being able to share information with a consistent support network. As an individual, it is hard to keep track and remain positive. Health apps can trigger the nocebo effect. Obsessively tracking how you feel, what you ate, and how you slept is a drag.
The elina app is designed to provide support for individuals in the tracking and managing of long-term pain, in collaboration with a team of doctors, health professionals and close friends – their chosen ‘e-team’. The app provides a positive and engaging tracking experience, alleviating the impact for users on their professional and personal lives.
In my role as Product Director for the @elina.app, my primary goal was to deliver a helpful app to users. I worked with the Aerate core team, stakeholders, developers and our advisory panel to make a valuable, user-centred design and product accessible. These had to be the drivers behind making the app easy to use for people living with long-term pain.
The @elina.app does not target one specific type of long-term pain and therefore user-testing, usability studies and quantitive testing and user-interaction would generate a broad range of results. We involved users at discovery through to design in order to be able to prove concept and design for purpose.
Investigative user experience methods are used to add context and insight to the design process from the user’s perspectives. This is what prevents us from designing for ourselves, prove/disprove assumptions and recognise our target audience’s needs and goals.
Observation
This is an active process of closely monitoring something with the ability to notice things with significant details. How do user’s interact with their device when they have Arthritis?
Interviews
These are designed to be engaging conversations with the target audience. Directed interviews are typically question and answer structures where we ask specific questions. Non directed interviews are more conversational where we ask open questions, mostly listen and the audience give their insights
Ethnographic interviews involve observing and chatting with people as they go about their day in their natural environment/day-to-day
Surveys
These are great for gathering large amounts of data from a diverse group quickly - however this lacks the intimacy needed to truly understand the user’s pain points.
Simply tap your pain's location on your avatar and use the sliders to track your pain, mood and energy. Add more detail to your entry by adding the type of pain and notes. Your e-team, your chosen circle of friends and healthcare professionals, will be able to see the information you've shared with them on the app, on an easy-to-navigate graph. Overall, they will get a better understanding of your conditions and be able to support you better in person.
The information you share with the elina app is encrypted, keeping your information safe and shared only with those who you have invited to join your e-team. An e-team member can be anyone you choose; Friends, Family, Colleagues or Healthcare professionals such as your Physiotherapist or Care-giver. Professional e-team members can also manage their time with you, using the built-in calendar to book and plan sessions based on your pain levels and graph.
Your e-team also have the option to 'raise a flag' to other members of your e-team should they feel the need to express concern, creating a consistent support network around you. Tracking with the elina app is designed to be unintrusive, simple and engaging, turning the recording and management of pain into a positive activity and alleviating the impact it has on your personal and professional life.
All around us, a new generation of technology is changing our lives. Each year more of us choose online routes to book GP appointments, order repeat prescriptions or view personal health records. Digital innovations have the potential to support and empower people, but data heavy tracking apps are in abundance, and don’t treat people sensitively.
