Awards
Awarded Gold for the 2018 ADCC Student Competition
Quarry Award for UX Design
John St for Strategic Design - Honourable Mention

Problem
In Canada, roughly 600,000 children under the age of 12 are affected by asthma and even with multiple solutions, only about 50% of them know how to use their inhalers properly. As a result, parents have to purchase addition equipment to aid their children through the process of taking their medication—such as an air chamber. Although these additional pieces are beneficial, they also brings challenges along with it:
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Air chambers are not only big and bulky, but it creates additional part that the kids have carry around
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Hard to know when the medication runs out. Not changing the medication on time can potentially lead to fatal incidents
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Children may feel embarrassed having to carry and or use an inhaler in public.

Design Challenge
How might we design a product for childhood asthma that is not only easy to use, but also empowers confidence in children to regularly take their medications, while helping parents with managing their kid's condition on an daily basis?
Solution
Oble is an easy to use, friendly, smart inhaler designed for children that combines the standard inhaler with the spacer into a single product. With it's companion app, Oble can help assist children taking their medication more efficiently without any prior assembly, and is embedded with Bluetooth technology that allows parents to track the device's usage and how well their child is doing every day.


Initial Research
To develop a better understanding of the challenges and struggles that accompany asthma, we wanted to hear from those who experience close interaction with it. Those such as parents, pharmacists, doctors as well as other individuals who have been effected by the issue.

From these small interactions, we gained valuable insight into the daily struggles faced with having and caring for those who have asthma. These were our main findings

After consolidating our findings from our user interviews, secondary research, and our competitor analysis, our team created a pact analysis and user personas to better illustrate what we are dealing with. This ultimately help us pinpoint what the current market was lacking, as well as what we can do to create a better solution.
Ideation
After multiple iterations of sketches and prototypes—as well as receiving feedback from our peers, parents and professors, we collectively finalized a product design that ultimately targets all of the problems areas that we wanted to resolve.




When the physical product of Oble reached a good state of quality and functionality, we started to establish what was needed in the application. Based on the information that we gathered from our interviews with pharmacists and parents, we identified some key goals:
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Simple
Creating an experience that is easy and understandable for all users to comprehend
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Safe and Secure
Bring reassurance to users about the safety of their children health
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Informative
Keeps users informed about any troubles or issues their children maybe be facing
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Manageable
Provides the ability to observe the progression of their childs asthma

Design System
With our product targeting a younger demographic, we wanted to create a friendly and approachable application that kids would love and parents could trust. Thus we incorporated light tones of blue and coral, soft and playful illustrations, and made it as simple as possible to make the user feel at ease.


Final Product
Oble is a friendly inhaler that allows children to take their asthma medication without worry of being looked down upon. Instead of feeling insecure about having asthma, they can get the right treatment confidently, whether at school, home or anywhere else they go.

Further Personalization
The product can be personalized with different replaceable silicone animal characters and stickers, making it more appealing for kids to carry around and also inspire them to regularly use their medications.

Oble Application
The Oble companion app is designed for parents to help administer their child's health. By tracking their breathing efficiency (tidal volume) with each use, the app also offers breathing practice exercises to help getting better with using Oble, if the child is having any problems. A report can also be exported as a document to share with their doctor.
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Interactive Onboarding
A simple and delightful user experience for first time users when pairing their Oble with the app and creating their child's profile.
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Feature Walkthrough
A simple and delightful user experience for first time users when pairing their Oble with the app and creating their child's profile.
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Manage Treatment
With detailed reports and you can compare weekly/monthly tracking through Oble’s application. Information such as number of times used can be crucial information in understanding symptoms.
Promotional Video
To attract a broad audience, we made a promotional video that is not only playful but informative.
Full Video→


