My team Roze, later renamed Roze Labs, were the overall winners of the Hack4Health (H4H) 2.0 hackathon, hosted by MAREP at the Conrad School of Entrepreneurship at the University of Waterloo.

Final pitch with Rui Su, Lori-Ann Williams, Marium kirmani, and myself.  *Lori-Ann and I have since left the project to prioritize academic endeavours, but tofollow how Rui Su and Marium Kirmani are continuing the project entrepreneurially, check out the RozeLabs twitter!

In a collaborative team of four, I devised a pitch and interviewed persons with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) to design a gamified fatigue management app aimed at young women recently diagnosed with MS. We were awarded $15 000 in research funding to explore our product potential from the MS Society of Canada. The funding resulted in further interviews with young with MS in the community and the dissemination of findings at the MS Society.

Problem

In a series of semi-structured interviews with mentors with lived experiences with MS present at H4H, we identified fatigue as a consistent worry of MS patients. Fatigue was limiting their abilities and motivation to participate in daily activities. Clinicians and neurodegenerative disease experts were subsequently consulted on potential solutions to fatigue, and regular exercise was cited as a benefit. However, there was difficulty motivating continuous exercising habits.

We returned to literature research to find MS had its highest prevalence in women, with the common age of onset between 25-35 years. For the duration of the hackathon we chose to focus on designing a product which can motivate young women recently diagnosed with MS to manage their fatigue.

Approach

We first created a persona of a young woman with MS who was:

• A digital native
• Aspirational in school and career goals
• A kitchener-waterloo resident

Her goals:

• Actively managing her MS symptoms
• Maintain energy levels for daily tasks

Her frustrations:

• MS resources were aimed at older adults
• Being seen differently with MS
• Taking time out of her schedule for MS-related check-ups in Toronto

In considering the persona, we decided the app needed to:

• Not be branded in a way which implies treatment or pathology
• Have an appearance competitive to current trendy fitness products (ie. fitbit)
• Motivate returning use without sense of punishment
• Functions are not limited by time or geography

Design

A mobile app “Roze” was designed as our hack submission. Roze would deliver videos of exercises appropriate for persons with MS by MS experts, and the user could indicate when they have completed an exercise. Progress was visualized as a growing plant to represent the continued growth of the MS journey, and new variations of leaves, flowers, or other plants would be available with constant logging of exercise. Badges and awards would become available for challenges such as trying a new exercise, or continually exercising for a set number of days. It is assumed the woman with MS is already interested in exercise for fatigue management upon app usage.

My team member Marium drafted the above mock-ups in our pitch after group discussion. The name Roze alludes to the feminine name Rose, as well as the past tense of rise.

Impact

Team photo (minus myself...) with Dr. Lisa Loiselle (left) and Dr. Karla Boluk (right).

Following our win, we were giving the opportunity to apply for a MS Society grant of $15 000 which we were successful in receiving with Dr. Boluk as our PI. We recognized that Roze's concept was feasible yet it was important to further understand our end-user before designing a solution.

Post-Hackathon Research

Between 2017-2018, a series of one-on-one interviews with MS experts and young women with MS were conducted after ethics approval with an ethics application lead by Rui and Marium as Roze Labs who wished to take the project further as a entrepreneurial endevaour.  At this point, I was no longer actively involved but provided consultation in an advisory role given my qualitative research experience. Results were shared at the MS Society September 2018 in Calgary by Rui and Marium, showing the systemic challenges facing young women with MS, while healthcare professionals acknowledged the need for more holistic tools for patients with MS.

The Roze Labs project delivered:

• Insight into the challenges of women with MS in the current healthcare system
• A research artifact to futher explore the role of gamification in MS tools 

What I would have done differently

The technology use patterns of women with MS should be adequately explored independent of MS. In retrospect, inclusion of such questions in the interviews would have portrayed the MS patients as individuals beyond MS and could have revealed novel patterns worthwhile to HCI research. We should have tested our assumptions that women with MS approach exercise differently than women without MS, women with other health conditions requiring regular visits with health professionals, or other genders.