product

our team designed fizzle, a parent-oriented, behavior-tracking solutions app for pediatric ADHD caregivers.

overview

i'm a student at the new england medical innovation center (NEMIC) in their med tech leadership program. through a series of product development workshops, we're tasked with designing a medical product. anything from a new dialysis machine to a diabetes app is fair game.

our team lead, sarah, had an idea in mind. as the mother to a child with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), she finds there is a dearth in effective apps for childhood ADHD management. the ubiquitous problem she's found is they are all minimally customizable. this is a huge problem for ADHD-tracking as each and every child has their own unique behaviors, triggers, and schedules.

team

‍emelie nguyen, sarah biester, osasemwinhia ogboghodo

tools

figma (wireframing, prototyping, visual design)

adobe illustrator (custom icons)

research

according to the world health organization (WHO), the U.S. has the highest adolescent ADHD rate at 8.1%. therefore, we believe that the U.S. would be the best market for this product because in order to market, it is easier if people are already familiar with ADHD. we believe there is also less stigma in the U.S. surrounding ADHD, making it easier to market.

there are not many existing apps in this space. one hypothesis as to why is because tracking a child's behavior isn't something the tech-y generation (eg. gen Z) is focused on tackling, as they don't have that experience firsthand.

ideation

based on sarah's lived experience and anecdotes from her ADHD parent facebook groups, we chose these five criteria for creating the most customizable app.

1. parent-owned: ADHD is an extremely complex disorder. it manifests itself differently from child to child. thus, a high level of customizability is needed to curate insights specifically for each child.
2. tracks behaviors: behaviors are exhibitions of overstimulation. whether it's stomping around the house or dissociating, tracking all of these behaviors is crucial to interpretingthe child's unique journey with ADHD.
3. track regulators: regulators are complements to behaviors and meant to assuage overstimulation. a weighted vest is an option many ADHD parents opt for, using the regulating method of tactile desensitization.
4. provides insights: one of the key heuristics of design is receiving an output for your input. in exchange for inputting their data for days to weeks, we want to provide an analysis on your data that you can use to make tangible change with your child. for example, if we observe that less than 7 hours of sleep is associated with emotional outbursts, we may change our child's bedtime to an hour earlier.
5. ‍predictive planning: birthday parties, amusement parks, and concerts are some of examples of events that may be overstimulating to a child with ADHD. for some children, occupational therapists recommend pre-loading on activities through regulators prior to big events. knowing when and and with what regulators to pre-load with can be crucial to making the event enjoyable for your child and others.

product

on the homepage, a parent will be able to track a variety of factors daily. these can be behaviors, regulators, sleep level, activity level, etc. there is an option to log custom factors as well to keep our platform parent-driven.

the insights page will display the most significant correlations between relevant factors. for example, regulator effect on activity level or sleep effect on mood. these insights can be used to choose the most effective pre-loading activity or regulatory behavior when a child is exhibiting signs of overstimulation.

as sarah mentioned before, pre-loading her son with regulators help him stay calm before big events. within the predictive calendar, i envision parents being able to input the child's daily events (like google calendar), and our calendar will recommend pre-loading and decompression activities before or after.

reflections

i had a great time integrating my medical interests with design, as well as learning about the nuances of ADHD. as someone with OCD, i realized that many of our features would be helpful to a range of neurodivergent teens and adults without ADHD. it would have been nice to be able to interview focus groups because we don't know if the behavior/regulator hypothesis sufficiently captures the needs of ADHD caregivers. most of class time was spent workshopping and learning about the regulations, ideation, and strategy behind medical products which was also extremely beneficial. i will be graduating from NEMIC in two days (apr 25), and i'm pretty sad to leave my NEMIC family and team behind for a new chapter.