Konnect: Progress post

Konnect is an app that connects the caregiving network with the patient in a fun and an engaging way so that they becomes the main source of motivation for the patient. This ultimately will help the patient overcome burnouts and better adhere to the prescribed diet and medication in a long run. 

Chronic diseases like Diabetes type 2 stay with patients all of their lives. With time, the motivation to follow the prescribed diet and medication fades away. It has been noticed that people who suffer from lifelong diseases are prone to depression by getting overwhelmed by the extra efforts. Diabetes burnout is the term given to the situation of disillusion, frustration and slight submission to the condition. Diabetes burnout involves the disregard of BG level management, avoid doctors visit and neglecting one's diet. Konnect is an app that is designed to connect friends and family of the patient so that they walk the walk with the patient and take them out of this state of depression without being commanding, nagging and by making the patient feel understood and loved. 

I connected with people suffering from diabetes type 1 and type 2 to know more about them and their journeys. These patients have been struggling with the disease for 5+ years now and have faced both the highs and the lows in the past. As per my observation, motivation plays a very important part and was mentioned by mostly everyone during the interviews. At some point, every patient has been either connected to the family, support group or friends for external motivation, even if they are living away from their families. Patients feel comfortable sharing their condition and daily BG levels with their families, but not beyond a certain point. Constant reminders and commands make the patient feel judged and hence there are chances of ignorance and shut down. Even if some of the patients and families were noticed to have knowledge about the disease, they faced difficulties in helping the patient adhere to the ideal diet and medication. 

How might we enable the caregiving network to become the main source of motivation for the patient so that the patient better adhere to the prescribed diet and medication? 

Konnect is a mobile app that offers challenges where the patients can participate with people in their caregiving network to gain rewards of the patient's choice. These challenges are designed to keep the patient in the center and others as support but the success or failure of the challenges will be determined but their individual goals and efforts. 

Konnect can help - 

- Promote healthy conversations within the family around health.
- Provide support to the family member suffering from the chronic disease by helping caregivers be a part of their journey. 
- Gamification - more focus, playing for the team. 
- Makes the patient feel comfortable with sharing. 
- Keeps the patient motivated. 
- Rewards provide extra motivation to the patient and its network.

So far, I have detailed out the flow of the app's screen. I am visioning this app to have quick and simple interactions. The app will have an engaging onboarding experience that also informs the users about the rules of the challenges. Every user can either create a new family challenge or an individual challenge. Once they pick a challenge, then they can decide their goals, the kind of rewards that they want, the duration of the challenge and also whom they want to play with. The center of focus of each challenge will be the patient, where for example in the case of 2 players, 60% of the success or failure will depend on the patient itself, whereas 40% will depend on the support person. The rewards are also for the patient to provide them with some extra motivation. 

I am working on refining these flows and will then create the prototypes to be tested out with users. The target is to test the prototypes and iterate at least once before I define the final version.