Hi, everyone.
Welcome to our presentation.
Today, I'm going to present our design project title as DiaFit
Designing customizable wearables for that Type 1 Diabetes monitoring.
I worked with Robert Mota and Dr. Sowmya Soamanath together
for this project.
This is a co-design study that gathered design ideas and insights
regarding customizable glucose monitors.
We explored people’s responses to customizing glucose monitors
and prototyped DiaFit
a proof-of-concept toolkit that can help people with
Type 1 Diabetes to build varied monitor designs.
The primary contribution of our work is in developing an initial
understanding of the design and acceptability of customizable
glucose monitors.
To address the challenges of using glucose monitors,
we set our goals. One of them was to understand how adults with T1D
use their medical devices during various situational
contexts. Because DiaFit was a customizable device, we wanted
to better understand how users view the process of building
their own glucose monitors
and learn more about if people would like to even build such devices
by themselves.
to explore our goals. we took a three-part strategy: Exploring, prototyping,
and testing.
We first conducted a brainstorming session with people who are
diagnosed with T1D and learned about their challenges
with the current glucose monitors.
They also developed ideas for glucose monitors that addressed their concerns.
Our discussions with them revealed three key design aspects
that were important for them to be able to customize:
portability, feedback and privacy of use.
With the light of results we designed and developed our
working prototype. In this lide you can see your modules
and accessories
I am going to share a video about how diafir can use used
and how modules and accessories functions together.
The modules provide haptic, visual, and audio feedback
about the glucose levels. Our prototype consists of multiple
modular accessories that people can assemble together to
build a monitor which can be worn on the wrist, finger,
ear or neck.
Lastly, we conducted evaluation sessions.
Participants created configurations for each accessory.
We wanted to learn which feedback modules
the participants preferred to use with the accessories.
They also selected accessories for various indoor and outdoor
activities and social and private contexts.
Our survey showed that participants' preferences were varied.
Participants also provided strong and weak points of DiaFit and
suggestions for the future.
We saw that The physical environment, the social situation, and
individual differences influence users' choices.
These differences result in different needs and expectations
from devices.
However, people are offered one-size-fit-all solutions.
We thought customizing would be a solution for various user needs.
Especially adults who self-identified as makers were more
interested in customizing making changes more often.
We think customizable features such as having a multi-sensorial
feedback option, wearing them on different body parts
help to create inclusive products.
DIY could make devices accessible and affordable.
People do not need to wait for their products upgraded
or even created.
They can make even better devices.
We had several limitations and challenges. For example,
Size of the components also resulted in how the modules look.
We were aiming to find more participants
but because of the Covid-19 we lost our chance to meet
with them.
As conclusion I can say that participants developed various
design options using DiaFit and expressed an interest
for participating in the design and development of health monitoring
devices. Our early research shows that our participants were enthusiastic
about customization, and it is great.
Going forward, we are interested in improving the design of our toolkit.
Please, check our paper for more detailed information and do not hesitate sending us your
questions. Thank you so much.