Welcome, I’m Melissa Li and I’ll be presenting my research on Seek: a Telehealth system for
preventing age-related vision loss inspired by the Quantified Self.
Age related vision loss is a far reaching, non discriminatory problem worldwide.
In 2019, 171 million adults over the age of 65 experienced eyesight impairment ranging
from severe vision loss to complete blindness due to diseases such as Glaucoma, Age Related
Macular Degeneration, Cataracts and Diabetic Retinopathy.
What’s more concerning is that 90% of those cases were preventable.
While routine eye check-ups are a critical step in prevention and early intervention,
known obstacles make accessing vision care increasingly difficult.
Some examples include availability, accessibility and affordability of care.
Fortunately, telehealth tools that have the ability to address some of these concerns.
Telehealth is the delivery of health care, health education and health information services
via remote technologies.
Broadly speaking, there are two main groups of telehealth users, those with chronic conditions
and needs, and those who use telehealth for preventative needs.
Both are equally important however a significant problem is that an overwhelming majority of
current research on design and development of telehealth systems fails to take preventative
users into consideration, only focusing on catering to users with chronic conditions.
This is problematic because telehealth users with preventative needs have a variety of
different characteristics compared to their counterparts which significantly affect factors
such as terms of adoption, data collection and prolonged use.
In this sense, we find that telehealth users with preventative needs are more similar to
participants of the Quantified Self movement, those who voluntarily and autonomously collect
and share information about their body vitals and daily habits through self-tracking technologies
such as Fitbits and Apple Watches.
Literature in the HCI community has identified where the inherent value for self-tracking
data can come from.
Cited reasons for user adoption include curiosity, improved self knowledge, rewards and enmeshment
in users everyday lives.
My research illustrates the similarities between the two and leverages existing literature
on the Quantified Self to inspire design requirements for telehealth systems for preventative care.
In my paper, I describe an application of my research through the design of Seek, a
telehealth system created to support older adults in self-managing their vision health
and endorse prevention of age related vision loss.
While a main function of this system is to pair the mobile application with the ocular
device for ocular image capture and upload, I focus on the design requirements and features
of the mobile application.
Through a comprehensive literature review and heuristic evaluations of existing mobile
applications , three design requirements were derived.
These requirements are suitable for preventative telehealth systems at large, and are described
in detail within my paper.
Low to mid fidelity mockups of the user interface were iteratively designed and aimed to minimize
difficulties older adults notably face.
Ultimately, font legibility, warm hues, large call to action buttons and navigation indicators
are some notable elements that were incorporated and are consistently seen throughout the features.
The features for Seek are embodied representations of the design requirements and exemplify what
preventative telehealth tools could look like.
The onboarding process requires disclosure of sensitive information only after both the
user and their optometrist have mutually verified their connection.
This was also designed so that the doctors themselves can partially assist their patients
in transitioning to a virtual assessment.
The tracking feature allows patients to review relevant details for their journey.
This feature supports target users who may struggle with memory, active recall and other
aspects related to cognitive decline.
The reward feature and positive affirmations were inspired by successes of Quantified Self
applications and helps facilitate an inviting experience for the user.
Most importantly, patients have the ability to share their ocular images with their optometrist.
Since simplified data input has been cited as a way to promote long term use of self-tracking
technologies, users are only allowed to upload images to their own doctor or request a call,
no text-based correspondence required or necessary.
This feature also protects users from any possibility of accidental disclosure of sensitive
information.
The features and considerations highlighted here are only a small subset of my work, and
I invite you to learn more about my research by downloading my paper.
Through this work, I hope to broaden the scope of telehealth research and stimulate conversation
on the future of preventative healthcare.
Thank you for listening.