Browsing by Author "Lu, Yi Chen"

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    Living better with diabetes
    (2020) Wang, Yuze; Lu, Yi Chen; Taiteiden ja suunnittelun korkeakoulu; School of Arts, Design and Architecture; Mattelmaki, Tuuli
    In recent years, burgeoning mobile health (mHealth) applications have been developed to facilitate healthcare engagement of patients living with chronic disease. However, recent studies have revealed the insufficient investigations on the user experience of these systems, causing a low rate of use and adherence to treatment. Therefore, this thesis was initiated based on the assumption that the well-being of diabetes patients could be improved by designing for the user experience of a mHealth application. As a means to incentivise design innovation, the thesis applied experience goal (Xgoal) -directed design approach which could potentially expand the design space. The general objective of the thesis is to understand and identify the opportunities of supporting Chinese diabetes patients' self-management life through a mHealth application. On an academic level, the thesis aims at exploring the Xgoal-directed approach utilised in the healthcare context. Based on the framework of Xgoal-directed approach, the thesis project is divided into two phases, i.e., Xgoal setting and Xgoal realisation. Accordingly, the research questions of the thesis are 1) what could be the experience goals of Chinese diabetes self-management life? 2) How can the defined experience goals of Chinese diabetes be approached by creating a mHealth application design concept? The experience goals in this thesis were mainly derived from an empathic design approach (i.e., preliminary user studies, field visits, physician interviews, and patients interviews) in conjunction with theory study. UX curve, combined with emotion cards, were utilised to facilitate the empathic research. As a result, four high-level Xgoals were defined (i.e., self-actualisation, security, stimulation and relatedness), as well as a set of research findings. Then the experience patterns were synthesised, in line with which the design features were ideated and further transformed into a personal mHealth application characterised by gamified function modules with human-touch and personalised content configuration. Subsequently, one quick user testing and one experience evaluation with the application of AttrakDiff questionnaire were executed to examine both the hedonic and pragmatic quality of the design proposal. In retrospection, the Xgoals function as a generative tool in concept generation stage, and a reflective tool in experience pattern distilling session and experience evaluation session. Furthermore, it is also found out that synthesising concretised experience patterns and appropriately "rewriting" them help in maintaining the experiential mindset and broaden the design space. However, the Xgoals were inadequately assessed in this thesis, might causing the inaccuracy in representing the genuine psychological needs of the patients. The research sample is also small, demanding more and deeper investigations on the target users. After all, this work is a tentative trial of applying Xgoal to explore design openings in the healthcare context, the final design proposal is definitely not the ultimate answer. If condition permitted, it would be valuable to further develop the experience patterns into more radical concepts based on sufficient empathic research, and innovative paradigms studies.