Breathe♥Bottle
Alexis Macaskill, Apolonia Hall, Jonah Cortezzo, Karamvir Rai
Overview
Each day, ten people die from asthma and many of these deaths are avoidable with proper rescue-inhaler usage. People with asthma are are supposed to carry their rescue inhaler on them at all times; however, with busy and dynamic schedules, the biggest opponent of using inhalers is just forgetting to physically bring or replace an empty or expired inhaler. This issue is especially prevalent in college students as they are often taken into completely new environments and have fast-paced and dynamic schedules. In a study done in 2015, data from 590 respondents suggested that 78.5% indicated that they had a rescue inhaler nearby, but these were not always easily accessible and available to help them when they had an asthma attack. In addition, 50.6% of these participants’ rescue inhalers were found to be expired and 48.2% of the rescue inhalers were empty. 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. 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.
Design Research Goals, Stakeholders, and Participants
To research our topic and target-group, we decided to use interviews as our primary method of research. Interviews allowed us to ask for direct information on how often students needed, used, and forgot their inhaler. Interviews, unlike other research methods such as diary studies and behavioral mappings, also allowed us to directly ask and receive information regarding how our interviewees felt when taking / forgetting their inhalers which gave us a touch of subjectivity and qualitative data rather than just all quantitative data. We were also able to further deepen the discussion on new points we found interesting that our interviewees brought up and explore their perspectives more in-depth. This information that we received worked really well in conjunction with the quantitative data we received and most of the information that was needed was easily translated into our interview protocol and focused on students that needed to use a rescue inhaler.
Our research consisted of three interviews from students at the University of Washington. For this we reached out to our friends and posted on Reddit. We used these two different methods of getting participants to ensure we had a variety of perspectives and weren’t inserting any internal biases through a hand-picked selection of people we already knew. Our participants consisted of a sophomore living in a sorority, a junior who commutes to campus, and a freshman living in a dorm on campus. All of the interviewees use maintenance inhalers frequently throughout the week, ranging from 2–5 times a week and they were all supposed to carry their rescue inhalers on them at all times. We chose students that lived different distances from campus to see how this affected their inhaler usage. For example, if the commuter left their inhaler at home, it was a much bigger deal than if the student who lived on campus forgot his inhaler as that student could more easily turn back and retrieve their inhaler.
Design Research Results and Themes
From our interviews we noticed that many of our interviewees have tried to create mental lists to remind themselves to bring their rescue inhaler with them whenever they left their house. Our interviewees also tried to create mental lists to remind themselves to take their maintenance inhaler as prescribed. Two of the interviewees did try to set alarms to remind themselves, but they didn’t use them consistently because they were hard to keep up with as the process had too many steps to be used efficiently. The interviewees also noted that even though they would sometimes set alarms to remind themselves, they often put off taking the inhaler, even if the alarm reminded them successfully, due to inconsistencies in their schedule. Some of these inconsistencies include their constantly varying class schedules. Our participants who used alarms often had class at different times on different days. This meant that on some days the alarm would remind them at home but on other days the alarm would remind them as they were walking to class. If they were busy or walking to class when the alarm went off, they would snooze or turn off the alarm and eventually forget to take their inhaler. There needed to be something more automatic and inhibiting to make sure it was integrated into their schedule.
After forgetting their inhalers many of the students we interviewed said that it causes them stress and anxiety. Increased levels of stress can cause their symptoms to worsen and it increased their risk of having an asthma attack. All of our interviewees noted that once they noticed they had forgotten their inhaler, it was hard if not impossible for them to focus on school work. After that moment, all they could do was worry about having an asthma attack and what they would do if that happened. All of this made being attentive in class very difficult. Two interviewees said if they forgot their inhaler and their inhaler was not easily accessible, they would ask their friends if they were near them and if they were carrying an inhaler that they could use. This can be difficult for students that don’t know others with the same inhaler, which was the case for one of our interviewees. In this case, this student always had to turn around and skip class entirely to go retrieve their inhaler.
Proposed Design
For our solution we wanted to focus on the problem that students have with remembering to take their inhaler. We targeted both issues with students remembering to physically bring inhalers and forgetting to take them as prescribed when they do have them. With an issue of forgetfulness, we aimed to help students by integrating inhaler use with something that is already often brought and remembered by college students. This led us to designing a water bottle that has a compartment for carrying an inhaler, as many college students bring water bottles every day to stay hydrated throughout hours of class.
Our designed water bottle, the Breathe♥Bottle, has various components to remind a student to take their inhaler with them to school and use it as prescribed. The main way the Breathe♥Bottle accomplishes this is via the lung graphic on the front of the bottle. This will light up according to the action the Breathe♥Bottle determines you need to take. The following list has the functionality for the Breathe♥Bottle’s light scheme:
● Blue: Time to take inhaler (see Figure 2).
● Red: Inhaler is not currently in the bottom compartment.
● Green: Inhaler is currently in the bottom compartment and is ready to be used.
● Yellow: Inhaler is low on pumps.
● Hot Pink: Someone nearby is requesting an inhaler.
The problems listed above were deemed most vital from our research, so we decided to have the Breathe♥Bottle work with all of them. The blue, red, and green colors all work in conjunction to make sure inhaler users never forget to physically bring or take their inhalers when needed. We added the yellow function to avoid a situation in which a user would run out of pumps due to not being able to see the count while the inhaler is in the bottle.
As shown in Figure 1, our design consists of a water bottle that comes with a removable bottom compartment from which someone can store or retrieve an inhaler. The water bottle will be unable to stand when the bottom compartment is unattached ensuring that the user is always cognizant of where the bottom compartment is located. From the various research interviews we conducted, we noticed that many students with asthma complained that they didn’t have a convenient way to carry their bulky inhalers. This issue is addressed in our design as water bottles are one of the most common items students carry with them. The compartment provides the additional utility of keeping the inhaler at a temperature between 60 to 80 degrees fahrenheit.
We also designed a mobile application that can be used in those scenarios where you forget to bring your inhaler and start feeling symptoms of an asthma attack. The person starting to feel symptoms would go on the app and be able to notify those that are within a certain radius that you are in need of an inhaler. The lung graphic on the water bottles of those around you would change to the color red. From this point, the person that has a rescue inhaler nearby would arrange to meet you and provide you with his/her inhaler. In moments like these, having a quick way to get access to a rescue inhaler is vital, and this peer-to-peer lending aspect of the design provides an extra layer of convenience and peace of mind for students that have asthma.
