Redesigning Blood Glucose Monitoring Device

In January 2019, I worked with a senior graphic designer on a redesigning project for practice. The goal was to find a device and come up with a better, improved design for its users. In search of a device, I came across the blood glucose level monitoring device, which was owned by a family member of mine. When I first saw it, I immediately thought the exterior of the device case needs a redesign, because it seemed very old and used even though it was a new case.

I asked the device owner to show me how to use it, and she gladly opened the case and showed me how it worked. I asked her to do loud thinking while doing the process, and I was able to grasp what the users had to go through to use the device. I wrote down a step-by-step task analysis while writing what she said next to the task. Here are some findings from this simple loud thinking technique:

After this usability test, we researched on the competitive products using Amazon and Google shopping.

 From the findings from the task analysis, usability test, and market research, we concluded that these were the major problems the users currently have:

1. The device case is ugly, and there are too many separate items (thus the long list of tasks)

2. The large portion of the users are elderly (65+) who may have low vision (and shaky hands) and needles and films are too small to handle

3. The using of the needle is always terrifying for the users, but the results are not always perfect (often, the users have to go through self-stabbing and bleeding again).

4. There are non-invasive devices in the market, but the prices are too high (almost x100 price). Using needle is the most economic method.  

For the problems, we chose two major goals we wanted to address in the re-design challenge:

-       Aesthetically more satisfying case design

-       Less items by unifying some of the items

As a result, we came up a design that has

-       White, plastic, simple case that looks cleaner and more friendly

-       Combining of film box, screen, device and the case together on the top part and combining the needle holder and needle box on the bottom

The visualization of the re-design is shown below: