Medical Mapping Methods: Designing Interactions for Self-Care

This project addresses how information and interaction design can create new data collection and interpretation methods that will improve individual efficacy in the management of the chronic illness type 2 diabetes. Medical journaling is an important method of recording and tracking the diabetes condition. Diabetics who journal to self-manage their condition can prolong their lives, gain a better understanding of their disease, and communicate more effectively with medical professionals. To address these issues, this project aims to create a software journaling application on a hand-held personal digital assistant (PDA), where diabetics can journal their day-to-day health-related information, such as blood glucose, diet, exercise and medications. Once data is input into the application, individuals can output the data in the form of visual maps. This allows the individual to look for patterns and trends in the hope of discovering something new about what works for managing the condition. Since health literacy and numeracy are issues for some, the use of an iconic visual language to navigate the user interface makes this application simple, easy to use and interactive. The individual’s effortless gathering of personal data and the ability to see that data in new visual forms offers an alternative to current self-management systems.