Interim Meeting

Today I had my interim presentation. Present were David Parkinson and David O’Leary. Visiting the Diabetes clinic, feedback from diabetes patients as well as professionals was discussed as well as my planned route forward. I discussed my key insights and 3 design fields. My main question point to them was ‘How future do I go, with the consideration of current, proven and future possible technologies?’

David Parkinson said ‘as long as their is a level of approved viability and reasoning to that technology or area of research to possibly come into existence then, their is no problem with utilising that capability’. University of Leeds developed a functioning prototype system demonstrative of a laser non intrusive blood test. This is something I look into possibly considering.

Further Reflection Points:

  • Remember ‘story telling’ can be the best way of communication and you can do that through video
  • communicate the experience
  • David Parkinson:  ‘Refine, Reduce, Refine’ 
  • David O’Leary: ‘ If someone walks up to your exhibition not knowing.. they should leave saying .. Oh thats interesting.. thats cool’
  • David Parkinson: ‘Is it more about consumer usability or the medical -functional values’

Moving forward I will develop my design concepts following my time plan and really try to increase Diabetes patient engagement and gain insights on my routes.

Sugar Control- Post it ideation

post it sugar control ideation

After Performing basic ideation with post it notes I move on to explore further with more detailed design ideation- focusing on segments of these raw ideas.

After exploring this area I will move on to my third area of ‘Integrated delivery and monitoring’.

Strategic & Technical Consulting discussion

stc

Had a great phone call this morning with STC. One of the directors of Strategic and Technical Consulting himself has a unique form of diabetes. Was also useful to briefly discuss sterility and hygiene within the pharmaceutical product manufacturing environment. Brian has agreed to follow up discussions and opportunities to review designs, concept and ideations. This will be useful as it will consider both perspectives of consumer and medical manufacturing perspectives.

Diabetes kit- post it ideation

Post it ideation- diabetes kit

I have started to make far greater break downs of ideation looking into my three main focus areas- Kit/ improved funciton, Controlling sugar, integrated delivery and monitoring. Above is an early sample of some kit composition thoughts and ideas. I will be repeating the process of 1) Post it ideation 2)Sketch + model development and 3) possible cad development for further communication. This will be repeated  with each focus area. Today I also made great developments contacting people for further primary research opportunities. I am greatly looking forward to my thoughts and concepts to be able to be briefly discussed and reviewed by professionals in the industry as well as diabetes patients.

Insulin Pump tube Measurements

pump tube measurements

tube measurements poll

I discovered a poll on Diabetes Daily  that provided peoples opinions on the different ranges of insulin pump tube lengths available.

Reflection: The shorter tube length is clearly supported more than the others however comments on the forum still showed interesting thoughts and considerations.. such as when you change clothes sometimes it may be easier to have a longer tube. People also stated their heights and said the smaller tube was not a problem even though they were very tall.

Insulin pump models- Experience

Pump Models

I created 1:1 scale foam models of the Animas pump (representing the average insulin pump form) and the Omnipod version 1 and 2. My plan is to wear the pumps for a week to experience how a diabetes patient feels. This will help me consider how they interact with their environment, get changed, wash, sleep and many more scenarios.