The Digital Product School is a full-time 3 month program by UnternehmerTUM Gmbh. Combining workshops and coaching with hands-on experience in digital product development, DPS provides the possibility for interdisciplinary teams to work in partnership with leading companies to develop digital solutions using user-centered, lean and agile methods.
We started with the problem space: "Wouldn't it be great if a sleep assessment was easy to get and comfortable to do?". Infineon manufactures a board with radar technology which is embedded with an algorithm for the detection of heart rates and breathing rates, which has optimal use when the board is relatively near the subject (no more than 1,2m) and they are still. We soon understood an ideal scenario: monitoring of vital signs during sleep.
To understand if our assumptions were correct, I recruited to participate in interviews people who had been involved with sleep exams (as a patient, a professional carrying it or analysing it). My aim was to understand key pain points and the user journey.
It was relatively easier to interview former partients from sleep laboratories rather than the professionals, so I started by mapping the pain points available. I carried 5 user interviews and used the Bull's Eye to prioritize pain points.
After prioritizing the pain points of the patients, I contacted the professionals of all sleep laboratories in Germany (300+) and I was able to set an interview with 5 professionals. I also used the Bull's Eye to prioritize their pain points.
With the ongoing process of the research we had ideation session with our team, stakeholders and mentors and we defined the pain points we would work to solve, considering what our hardware was able to deliver, the time contraints for the software development and the needs of the users. I highlighted for the team the main insights, which were: 1) Patients perceive a lack of information regarding their exam and treatment; 2) Patients are unsure about the treatment they are undergoing; 3) Some professionals have to track patients to understand why they are not following their treatment and create awareness. People with a sleep disorder (like sleep apnea) who have to follow up their treatment occasionaly in the sleep laboratory, but have no effective measurement at home, were a particular case and a focus for exploring. By doing a research among the German health insurances, I discovered that there are around 2.2 million people suffering from sleep apnea in Germany, with a cost of circa € 280 million per year only in treatment devices (breathing masks used during sleep; CPAP) for the insurers. It seemed a relevant and vast market to explore. With all the interviews I did, I also developed and constantly update the user Story Map, which was the main guide to what, where and when should be developed.
I moderated ideation sessions with my team (one Interaction Designer, one AI Engineer and two Software Engineers), which I used to define the vision of the product. I also moderated weekly planning meetings and daily meetings to prioritize our work, using GitHub Kanban and Miro board. Since the beginning our team developed low-fi prototypes on Figma, which I made sure to carry usability testing with our target users. While the product was developing and turning into high-fidelity, I ensure with my team to keep the vision united in order to deliver a Minimum Viable Product.
We worked with Agile development, with constant reiteration, research, feedback, insights, ideation and prototyping, testing with our users with each new iteration. Being constantly in communication with users and keeping the story map of the user updated was the main key to our product development process.
After 3 months of work we presented a MVP to our stakeholders and other partners: Sential, a mobile app which, combined with a radar board, gathers the user's vital signs (breathing rate an heart rate) during sleep, providing a feedback about their sleep performance and a track of their treatment for a sleep disorder. It also provides analysis of sleep estimation using Artificial Intelligence. Considering what I gathered in the research I've carried, the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) of our product consisted in providing in an easy and clear way to the user a way to understand how their vital signs are during sleep, even if they don't follow their treatment, and in this case also create awareness about the importance of following the treatment or to discuss it with their doctors. As feedback from users in the usability testing since the low-fi prototypes, it was vital to have a clear summary since they are opening the app. Also, that they could understand and be aware if they are not having good measurements during their sleep. This, combined with a completely contactless solution, made us receive very good feedback from the users and stakeholders. And we of course celebrated it!
WHAT WERE THE PROBLEMS?
It took me a month to be able to validate the assumptions with the professionals, given it was difficult to schedule the interviews due to their availability. Because of that, in the beginning we thought our product could benefit the professionals and sleep laboratories even more than the patients. When we invalidated our assumptions, by understanding our product would not solve the professionals main pain points, we took the decision to pivot for patients with sleep disorders, considering the insights we had had from their interviews. To deal with this initial lack of validation, we focused in developing the main structure of a versatile product, focusing in the feedback of the radar measurements. I also carried radar experiments.
WHAT AM I PROUD OF?
I was able to keep the team united since the beginning and work in a collective. I ensured the communication was flowing well and everything was clear, giving time and space to my colleagues to speak during weekly retrospectives and to bring their ideas in a safe environment with acceptance. I kept the team motivated when we pivot and when we had problems validating assumptions. We had time constraints and sometimes stressful moments, but prioritizing tasks and making sure people could see our progress, also smoothed the process. I am very proud we delivered a product the users love and see value in.
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