Huff Puff - Bridging access gaps in adolescent asthma care with design-led solutions
My Role
Product Designer
Category
B2C
HealthTech
Responsibilities
Researching user behavior in habitat
Mapping user journeys, pain points
Co-designing intervention concepts
Impact
15 %
boost in inhaler know-how
Context.
This project, in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) – Department of Design & Manufacturing, aimed to enhance asthma management for economically disadvantaged adolescents. It addressed key challenges such as support, medication costs, and language barriers, with a strong focus on improving inhaler use and medication delivery.
By integrating a smart inhaler, the solution streamlines asthma care through accessibility, behavior tracking, and personalized health support, ensuring better management for India’s lower-middle-class adolescents.
METHODS
User Research
Habitat Study
Requirement generation & Prioritization
Stakeholder Validation
Prototyping
User Testing
TEAM
1 UX Designers
2 UX Researchers
1 Sr. UX Researcher
TIME
Jan 2023 - Jun 2023
Solution Devoid Problem Statement.
Adolescents with asthma from low-income families often struggle with limited support and the high cost of medication, making asthma management challenging. Additionally, language barriers - particularly difficulty reading English increase the risk of incorrect inhaler use, leading to poor medication delivery and ineffective symptom control.
Process.
Skip to design
Stakeholder mapping.
Secondary
research.
Since this was a sensitive medtech topic, we ensured all information was sourced from credible platforms:
We referred to trusted research databases for relevant scientific and clinical papers.
Relevant patents for solution exploration.
Conducted market research on various types of inhalers, including Metered Dose Inhalers (MDIs), Dry Powder Inhalers, Nebulizers, Breath-Actuated Inhalers, and combination devices.
74.3% of asthmatics preferred MDIs, prompting us to focus our competitive analysis on the most commonly used inhalers in the market.
Foracort Inhaler 200
Asthalin 100 mcg Inhaler
Seretide 100 Accuhaler
Primary research.
We conducted interviews with 1° and 2°stakeholders using tailored questions specific to their roles, allowing us to gain deeper insights into their unique perspectives.
Students from government schools
Parents of adolescent asthmatics
Pulmonologist
Teachers at school
Pharmacists
Over 1/3 of the users reported challenges related to high treatment costs, confusing onboarding and inhaler usage, reliance on pharmacists for guidance, and poor communication within school environments.
Insights from stakeholder and habitat observation.
We interviewed users from lower middle class, middle class, and upper middle class strata of the Indian economy to understand how socio-economic background influences asthma care awareness, access to medication, and adherence to inhaler routines.
Asthma care journey in a 'low' income setting
While users often turn to manuals when using a product for the first time, asthma patients from India’s lower middle class often face challenges due to illiteracy in English. Even if they can afford the inhaler, language barriers leave them unsure of how to use it correctly.
The journey remained the same, but since they understand English or can interpret visuals, they’re able to follow the manual though confusion around inhaler use still persists.
Asthma care journey in a 'high' income setting
Users from this group faced no issues with the use of an asthma inhaler
Selected focus area within the user journey.
We selected step -7 from the journeys vetted out above.
Onboarding
Many users struggle to use inhalers correctly, especially when buying one in an emergency.
Proper inhalation techniques are often unclear due to vague or overly complex instructions.
Inhaler manuals usually include foreign languages but lack Indian language support.
This creates a barrier for users who are illiterate or have limited formal education.
As a result, they face difficulty understanding when and how to use the inhaler effectively.
Cost barriers
Inhalers have a short usage span, making frequent replacements costly and unaffordable for many users.
Lack of awareness & stigma
There is a pressing need to break the stigma around asthma and normalize inhaler use in public spaces.
A day in the life.
.
At this stage, we synthesized insights from interviews, habitat studies, and focus groups to map a typical day in the life of an adolescent asthmatic from a lower-middle-class family.
This stakeholder journey map helped us identify key pain points (marked in red) and moments where challenges most often arise, which we then captured in a detailed user persona.
Stakeholder persona.
Requirement generation & prioritization.
After cracking the persona and putting together pains, gains and baseline expectations, 7 requirements were derived so as to start iterating the design solutions. The requirement generation is as follows:
Since we followed a user-centered process, we conducted stakeholder validation to stay on track. Research documentation confirmed that 86.3% of users agreed these requirements would simplify asthma management.
These requirements were then prioritized.
The way this was done.
Each requirement was compared against the others to assess its relative importance. For example, when comparing R1 with each of the other eight requirements, if R1 was more important than R2 in addressing identified pain points, it was marked as 1; otherwise, it was marked as 0. The total for all requirements was then calculated (28 in this case). Finally, each requirement’s score was divided by this total to determine its relative importance, shown in the last column.
Concept Generation.
.
Various ideas were brainstormed to address these requirements and then grouped to form cohesive concepts. Three concepts emerged (labeled yellow, blue, and purple)as a result of permutaitons and combinations of these ideas.
These concepts were subsequently evaluated against each requirement to assess how well they met the prioritized needs.
Concept Selection.
.
Finally, the scores for each concept were totaled, and the highest-scoring concept was refined further to become the final DI.
If a concept met a requirement, it was scored as 1; if it didn’t, it was scored as 0; and if it partially addressed the requirement, it received a 0.5. Each score was then multiplied by the relative importance of the corresponding requirement from the prioritization step.
Final concept detailing.
.
In the process of detailing out the DI, we penned down
Use case description (An ideal situation when the user would use the proposed Design Intervention)
Use case steps - We brainstormed various ideas to address each step of the use case, then selected the most suitable idea, providing justification for why it was the best choice.
Concept Storyboard
Following this, we validated the concept storyboard once more with both primary and secondary stakeholders where we got 85.3% acceptance.
Afterward, the final storyboards were determined and documented.
Final Design Intervention.
Mobile App Design.
User Testing.
To ensure the Smart Inhaler and its accompanying Bluetooth app were effective and user-friendly, I conducted comprehensive usability testing in multiple phases. The goal was to validate the design and functionality of both the physical product and digital interface, while uncovering areas for improvement.
Key Takeaways.
Accessibility is crucial: Simplifying navigation and minimizing text-heavy screens led to greater app engagement.
Visual and interactive training approaches, such as AR, proved highly effective for educating users on inhaler techniques.
User comfort and ease of use in the physical design of the inhaler directly influenced its adoption and effectiveness.
Latest projects
See some of my other projects
{
B2B SaaS | Product design
Redesign of a project management tool for Colliers
User journey maps, Heuristic evaluation, Wireframing, Prototyping, User testing
{
B2C | Usability testing
}
Optimizing resource access on Washington 211 website
Surveys, SUS questionnaires, Affinity diagramming, Redesign recommendations
{
B2B SaaS | Product Design
}
Designing Create Studio's digital presence
Responsive Web Design, Micro interactions
Scroll animations