Breathe♥Blog
We aim to alleviate this issue by designing efficient and effective ways to get college students to bring and take their inhalers.
Contributors: Alexis Macaskill, Apolonia Hall, Jonah Cortezzo, Karamvir Rai
Overview
In a recent study conducted in 2015, data from 590 asthma patients found only 60% of the patients indicated that they had a working rescue inhaler nearby (Storms). An inhaler that is not easily accessible, empty, or expired puts patients with asthma at a high risk for having an asthma attack, which can lead to a costly trip to the emergency department and can even be fatal. Our user research identified the biggest opponents of adherence to proper rescue-inhaler usage were forgetting to physically bring their inhaler and having an empty or expired inhaler. We feel that we can do more to control the preventable risk factors of asthma surrounding rescue inhaler usage. We aim to alleviate this issue by designing efficient and effective ways to get college students to bring and take their inhalers.
Solution
Our solution to this problem consists of two components, a smart water bottle and a supplementary mobile application that goes with it. The ubiquity of water bottles on college campuses was the primary reason why we chose it as the basis of our solution. Our water bottle
will include a compartment attached to the bottom where a student can store and retrieve their rescue inhaler conveniently. The mobile application will notify you if you leave without your inhaler, running low on your inhaler puff count, and provides a local peer-to-peer inhaler lending platform in situations where you are having an asthma attack without your inhaler nearby. Additionally, the lung icon on the water bottle will change color based on situations ranging from low remaining puff counts on your inhaler to situations where there is a student nearby that needs to use a rescue inhaler. We envision people for the most part will use our water bottle just the way they would use a regular water bottle, so there is no big learning curve to adapt to our design.
Paper Prototype, Testing Process, and Results
We tested our Breathe Bottle idea with three college students who have asthma and use their rescue inhaler on a frequent basis. We gave each college student a series of scenarios surrounding rescue inhaler usage and then asked them to use our paper prototype with this scenario in mind. We then documented any difficulties or frustrations the students’ expressed while interacting with our prototype.
These usability tests prompted us to make several changes to our solution. For example, users didn’t think the water bottle lighting up red would be enough to alert them that they were leaving the house without their inhaler. To fix this, we added notifications to the application so users would be alerted when they were leaving the house without their inhaler. The usability tests also found that despite the breathe bottles’ “Find an inhaler near you” feature, users weren’t able to find the person with the nearby inhaler by solely looking for the other pink flashing water bottle. To fix this, we added the “find an inhaler near you” feature to the application’s interface which provides the exact location and contact information of the person with this inhaler.
Digital Mockup:
The Breathe♥Bottle — Link to CAD Model
Pictured above is the physical aspect of our design, the Breathe♥Bottle. This bottle has a detachable compartment that holds an inhaler. Our compartment is “smart” in that it can detect when there is inhaler in it and when there is not. Our first task we focused on was making sure a user will remember to physically bring their inhaler. We’ve accomplished this via our patented
Breathe♥SmartCompartmentTM technology where the compartment syncs up to the lung logo on the front of the bottle and changes its color according to the state of the inhaler. When there is no inhaler, the lung logo will turn red as shown above (its natural state is a light blue), signifying that the user needs to put in their inhaler. This, paired with the app’s notification system, ensures that a user will never forget to bring their inhaler inside of their Breathe♥Bottle. The second way we accomplish this is via the small ramp on the bottom of the bottle. See below:
This ramp ensures that the bottle cannot stand straight without its bottom compartment, making sure users will never bring the bottle without the compartment. Our original design was to make it impossible for the bottle to stand without the compartment, but we heard the voices of clients who used our prototype that they’d enjoy the flexibility of using their bottles as they see fit. With this knowledge, we innovated on the design to arrive at the ramp our current model has; it is very obvious if you have not brought the bottom compartment, but the bottle is still not entirely unusable if you’ve forgotten it. Another minor change we made was splitting up the logo on the bottle / compartment, which further reminds users if they’re forgetting the compartment as the logo is incomplete.
The second task we designed for is making sure users always have access to an inhaler, no matter where they are. Since we targeted specifically college students, we implemented our object as a water bottle as many students already bring water bottles with them wherever they go. Now, if users remember to bring their water bottle, they’ll automatically have their inhalers with them already. We also helped this task by making sure the bottle notifies you when you’re running low on inhaler pumps. By synching your bottle to the Breathe♥Bottle app, you can update your inhaler count. When your inhaler count is under a certain threshold, the lung logo on the bottle will turn yellow to remind you to refill it. Finally, we also wanted to design for if a user forgets to bring their Breathe♥Bottle. If the user goes on the app, the user can press a button to alert nearby bottles by turning their lung logos hot pink. This will cause any users with bottles around to check their phones so they can contact the person who pinged out so that the person in need can use their inhalers. This ensures that even if a user does forget their Breathe♥Bottle they still have access to an inhaler via the Breathe♥Community.
When conducting our interviews for user research, we were able to identify several needs in our target group. Students who have asthma expressed frustration of how difficult and inconvenient it is to carry a bulky inhaler because its not made to fit comfortable in tight pockets. This made them less likely to carry it on them because its burdensome. All of the students we interviewed had experiences where they forgot to bring their inhaler with them to school. This lead them to be more anxious and stressed, which they said is more likely to provoke an asthma attack. We leveraged this input from our target group and framed a solution around these identified needs. Our Breathe Bottle, with our mobile application component, is designed to ensure that the user always has it on them when they are going to or from class. Furthermore, in those rare situations where the user is without an inhaler and having an asthma attack, we created a local inhaler sharing service that can be utilized. We hope that our solution makes life for students with asthma easier.
