Onduo mobile app

The Onduo mobile app helps people with Type 2 Diabetes better manage their blood glucose through lifestyle strategies.

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Verily // 2017-18
Product strategy, mobile UX, consumer health, behavior change

My Role
I was one of two designers who led the patient mobile app experience from scratch: strategic product definition, leading UX of IA and core features, to commercial launch and continued iteration.

The Challenge
Type 2 Diabetes affects ~30 million people in the US alone. Self-management involves juggling lifestyle choices, medications, and doctor’s visits — an overwhelming and challenging job. How might we ease the burden of self-management so people feel in control of their diabetes?

The Outcome
A mobile app that empowers users to make sense of their blood glucose patterns and learn how specific lifestyle changes can influence their glucose levels.

Onduo is Verily’s first disease management platform and first commercially available medical device.

Understanding the problem space

What is Type 2 Diabetes?

Type 2 Diabetes is a chronic condition that leads to too much or too little glucose in the bloodstream.

Managing Type 2 Diabetes means controlling the ups and downs of one’s blood glucose. This is usually done through lifestyle choices such as eating, exercise, stress management, and medications.

Common pain points

Patients are overwhelmed
Patients are overloaded with information about how to best manage their diabetes.

Missing context in between blood glucose readings
People often don’t understand the cause and effects of their blood glucose levels.

Data is sparse and manually collected
Notebooks and spreadsheets are some common tools used to track blood glucose data. 

Understanding our users

Target population

Personas (redacted)

Characteristics

Years of diagnosis
Readiness to change
Knowledge of diabetes
Socioeconomic status
Tech literacy

I worked closely with our clinical and product teams to define user journeys based on our personas, research, and user needs.

The Onduo ecosystem

The Onduo ecosystem has three primary components, all focused on helping a patient better understand their blood glucose.

MOBILE APP Information architecture

I designed the app’s information architecture around the three core user journeys and gained alignment on the objectives for each section of app. This drove the underlying structure for the entire product and guided roadmap planning.

Behavior change design

The key to managing chronic conditions are behavior changes around lifestyle choices. I collaborated closely with our team’s behavioral scientist to embed behavior change, motivation, and trust principles into our features. 

Key moments

Below are select moments from the mobile app experience. After aligning the team on the foundational IA, I designed core features on each of the primary pages in the app.