NEAT-O
Multi-Touchpoint Design Strategy
NEAT-O is a digital Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) program designed for individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD) and concurrent anxiety or mood disorders.
MY ROLE
UX Strategist
UX Researcher
UX/UI Designer
Deliverables:
Annotated Prototypes
THE GOAL: Focus on a multi-touchpoint strategy to create a supportive onboarding experience and encourage regular engagement with the app in order to create a meaningful product that will be a positive addition to a patient’s recovery journey.
THE TEAMMATES: Emma Grisanzio | Nancy Dabla
METHODS
Stakeholder Interview
Secondary Research
Touchpoint Strategy Mapping
Mid and High-Fidelity Prototyping
Project Background
The Anker/Rinehart lab out of the University of Minnesota has proposed NEAT-O, a tool that supports individuals suffering from opioid use disorder (OUD) and concurrent anxiety or mood disorders. NEAT-O is a digital therapy tool backed by an empirically supported Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) program tailored to address the complexities of comorbidity in substance use disorders. As a cross-platform (iOS/Android) mobile app, NEAT-O will provide educational and supportive tools for patients to use throughout their recovery journey.
NEAT-O is designed for prescription use to increase treatment engagement, reduce cravings, and improve the quality of life in individuals with OUD. It will be marketed as Software as a Medical Device (SaMD), which means that the FDA will be performing comprehensive evaluation of NEAT-O in order to ensure its safety and effectiveness before the app is incorporated into the healthcare system.
The Problem
NEAT-O is in the beginning stages of fleshing out how the app will look and how it will serve it's primary audience. The Anker/Rinehart lab has done extensive research and developed a framework of learning modules to be included within the app. As a team of 3, we were tasked with developing a multi-touchpoint patient-centered design strategy that prioritizes patient-care values. Our goal was to create a supportive onboarding experience and encourage regular engagement with the app.
“The digital therapy concept is fairly new - there are not a lot of regulated digital therapies, meaning it’s kind of a wild west right now.”
The Research
Deep Dive:
This project required a deep dive into a wealth of secondary research provided by the Anker/Rinehart team. Between the research provided by the client and our own specific interests, we focused our research around some questions in order to wrap our head around how to best approach a solution:
What already exists in this SaMD space?
How well do these products work?
What problems still exist, and what opportunities can we leverage to change the experience of NEAT-O?
What is most important to the primary audience? What do they value in a product like this, and what do they need to feel successfully supported in their recovery journey?
Because of my past experience from a coaching certification I received in 2022 in addiction recovery and transformational life experience integration, I was eager to take a deep dive into the patient's experience while my teammates focused on other areas. I focused on researching best methods of supporting patients in their recovery journey, the experience of addiction as a whole, and what patients need and desire for a successful recovery. Between the 3 of us, at the end of our deep dive we have a comprehensive understanding of what should be prioritized in our multi-touchpoint solution.
The Process
Strategy Statement:
Guiding Principles:
Touchpoint Strategy:
At first, we had difficulty visualizing the patient touchpoints within the app. The “awareness” and “onboarding” phases were straight forward and easy for us to conceptualize. But the “experience” phase proved more complicated.
We knew we needed to include some non-linear visualization of a patient’s experience within the learning modules.
As a patient continues through the linear timeline of modules, they are then able to go back in and interact with completed lessons. Some continuous interactions include:
Tracking cravings, moods, and sleep
Rewatching videos/modules
Adding new journal entries
Meditation and breathwork sessions
Acitivty scheduling and ideas
Access their personal toolkit of coping skills
NEAT-O’s vision is complex, and involves a lot of crucial information and interaction for a patient that can really help them in their recovery journey. How can we best support their vision with a comprehensive solution that can deeply meet patients’ needs?
Knowing full well that our larger UX team was working on the same problem with their own unique perspectives and vision, we felt confident moving forward within our small team’s defined scope. We knew that NEAT-O would receive a plethora of detailed and amazing solutions that they will evaluate and decide what they would like to move forward with as they further develop their app.
Final version of our team’s Touchpoint Strategy map, showing our non-linear visualization of the patient’s experience within the app.
Our team sat down for a discussion on a plan to move forward with a system of prototypes that would be delivered to the client. We wanted to focus on three main touchpoints and divided them up accordingly:
My Focus: a learning module page with examples of how the information can be interactive and encourage routine use
Nancy’s Focus: a notification system to encourage daily/routine use
Emma’s Focus: a landing page that helps visualize a patient’s progress through the modules, as well as tracked data and stats.
To ensure we were on the same page, we came up with a small design system to create a cohesive deliverable to the client. This included a color scheme, font system, sizing standards, and a system of hierarchy. We worked together processing our ideas and gathering feedback from each other as we started planning out our individual prototypes.
Prototype Planning:
To really hone in on our goals as a team and stay focused throughout the development of our solution, we came up with a strategy statement and guiding principles.
All patient touchpoints for NEAT-O will help adults diagnosed with OUD and concurrent anxiety and mood disorders to feel empowered and supported so that they are able to meet their recovery goals. We will do this by focusing on easy-to-navigate education, a safe environment, and motivational progress tracking.
Patient Privacy and Reliable App Functioning: Ensuring patient privacy and reliable app functioning establishes trust.
Community Support in Non-Judgemental Environment: Patients thrive with community support in a non-judgmental and non-stigmatized environment.
Ease of Use: Patients are more likely to use an app that is easy to use, intuitive, and accessible.
Education and Self-Empowerment: Learning about themselves and the science around how their brains work empowers patients to build a toolkit of coping mechanisms to handle cravings, triggers, and emotions in a healthier way.
Companion Tool for Recovery: NEAT-O is a companion tool for a patient’s recovery journey, not a cure.
After defining our scope for a solution, we got to work on visualizing a multi-touchpoint strategy map. It was crucial at this point to focus on collaboration and listening to everyone’s ideas and thought processes in order to come up with a touchpoint map that felt aligned to all three of us.
Our team’s whiteboarding visualization of the patient touchpoint experience map.
Challenge: Visualizing the experience phase of the touchpoint map
The Solution
My task was to focus on the learning module pages, and I created a high-fidelity prototype showing how the modules can be an interactive and gamified experience for the patient.
My design solution focused around empowering, encouraging, and celebrating the patient as they moved through the app. I wanted to ensure the modules were easy to digest and navigate.
In order to dive deeply into this specific prototype, I focused solely on a single learning module that NEAT-O had outlined for us in their overview documentation, and incorporated their general expectations of how the modules will look within the app:
Patients can choose a personalized animated character
Video integration ensuring accessibility with audio subtitles
Quizzes to help with information comprehension
Trigger identification and tracking form; including detailed logging of cravings, mood and the context in which the craving occurred
Journal prompts
Achievement/gamification to create a positive feedback loop for patient interaction
Module landing page, depicting animated character and how the modules will appear from a patient’s perspective
Team Contributions:
Trigger & craving tracking interaction, showing comprehensive logging with mood, severity, trigger tags, and a free-form text input for the patient to journal about their specific craving.
Emma set the tone with her dashboard landing page, and we worked collaboratively to create a cohesive design system between our two prototypes. Her dashboard would be the jumping off point for patients to continue explore the rest of the app.
Nancy created a storyboard that helped the client visualize how and when notifications would pop up for the patient. Her main focus was on keeping privacy at the top of mind for all notifications. She also focused on letting the patient customize what types of notifications they would receive and when they would receive them.
Next Steps
This project really hit one of my passion points, and I would be interested in working with the stakeholders further, in order to gather feedback on our prototypes and continue iterating on our design to better meet the client’s and patient’s needs.
Incorporating a community aspect is a crucial aspect of an individual’s recovery journey. For their pilot study, NEAT-O had no plans to include community connection but it could be developed in further prototypes. Respecting privacy and anonymity within this feature would be of utmost importance.
Adding a provider view within the app would aid in the holistic aspect of a person’s recovery journey, and further therapies and treatments could better address patient’s needs. This planned for future roadmaps, but not a priority for the pilot study at the moment, due to SaMD and FDA regulations.
Key Learnings & Challenges
Collaborating as a team was the highlight of this project for me. I thoroughly enjoyed bouncing ideas off of one another, problem solving together, and coming up with a cohesive client deliverable.
This project was complex and required careful consideration of respectful tone and language surrounding OUD/SUD and concurrent mood disorders. We had difficulty honing in on what aspects of the project should be at the forefront of our focus as our ideas were flowing and we