Diabetes emoticons designed by patient experts!

The idea for the Diabetes Emoticons app was developed through a patient-centered design workshop sponsored by HealthDesignBy.Us, a collaborative of patients and caregivers, healthcare providers and researchers, designers and artists, engineers and technologists, public health professionals, and community members who are passionate about patient-centered participatory design and infusing the maker movement into healthcare. The experts in diabetes, namely patients and caregivers, were the clients for a multidisciplinary team of University of Michigan students, faculty, and business partners. The groups engaged in the process of design thinking, starting with empathy and identification of a problem, to ideation, and paper prototype development. Patients and caregivers were active participants in the problem identification and in the co-design of solutions.

The Problem:
"It’s annoying to get lots of text messages from your mom about diabetes stuff when you are a teenager with type 1 diabetes.”

The Solution:
Make communication easier between parent and child through the use of diabetes emoticons.

Paper prototypes of the icons were developed by the teens (Reece and Olivia Ohmer), U-M Stamps School of Art & Design students created the illustrations (Margot Robert) and user interface mockups (Xiaoying He), and students from Michigan Hackers created the applications (Jawad Nasser and Connor Krupp)!

This app is a collaboration of HealthDesignBy.Us and Michigan Hackers. Thanks to the generous support from the University of Michigan Department of Pediatrics Charles Woodson Clinical Research Fund, Child Health Evaluation and Research Unit, University of Michigan Provost Global Challenges Grant, and University of Michigan Health System Fostering Innovation Grant.