The client came to us with a student project that had garnered a lot of internal enthusiasm, with the suspicion that perhaps approaching the research with more rigor would produce a more differentiating insight and strategy for an app that patients would really want to use. There are tons of symptom trackers out there - this client wanted their patient support app to be something differentiated and unique to this condition. We were brought on for a three month strategy and concepting engagement.

The Approach

We initially scoped two sets of exploratory interviews - one with sleep disorder experts, and one with patients. We hit a number of snags with legal and compliance that pushed the timeline and forced us to adapt and take a more scrappy approach to information gathering. Ultimately we did conduct exploratory interviews with experts, and we conducted concept testing with patients later in the engagement. We also did a competitive/comparative audit, social listening, desk research (medical literature focused primarily on behavior change), and an audit of existing client research.

The Findings

The initial work seemed to assume that these patients wanted consistent energy levels through the day. But what we learned was that these patients had no expectation of having energy all the time; it was more about having energy when they needed it. They just wanted to be able to do the things they needed to do and wanted to do, and not feel bad about feeling bad. Both patients and physicians wanted insight to help manage their medication and self-treatment to optimize patient productivity.

The Outcome

We delivered a strategy read-out at the conclusion of the engagement, and the client’s in-house design team picked it up from there. The work is still in progress.

Activities: depth interviews, concept testing, competitive/comparative app audit, social listening, desk research (medical literature), review of existing research

Deliverables: concepts, strategy read-out, opportunity areas, MVP definition, lean business model canvas, proposed feature roadmap