Project Type and Duration: Experience Design Internship | 6 months
Team: Periwinkle Labs, Indian Institute of Science
Mentor: Dr. Manish Arora
Team Lead : Komal Shah
About the sponsor
Periwinkle Labs is incubated with the Foundation of Science Innovation and Development at the Indian Institute of Sciences, Bengaluru. Their genesis dates back to 2019 and have since been working towards empowering millions of women suffering from urinary incontinence by making it easy for them to take control of their pelvic health anytime, anywhere.
Project Objectives
The primary objective of this project is to design and develop a digital application that utilizes electromyography (EMG) biofeedback, for pelvic floor re-education in women experiencing urinary incontinence. This approach aims to provide simple and effective digital ways of managing and improving pelvic floor health.
Experience Design objectives
1. Empowering Users through Education and Engagement
Given the nature and position of pelvic floor muscles, there is no immediate feedback for patients who exercise to know whether they are engaging the right muscles. Our objective was to empower patients using biofeedback to feel confident in exercise routine and course correct in case of incorrect muscle engagement.
2. Improving Accessibility and Compliance
EMG data is hard to comprehend for non-clinicians. Our objective was to simplify this EMG data received from wearable and create an simple, intuitive and engaging digital experience for at home pelvic floor re-education.
My Contribution
Designing an innovative and empowering digital experience for pelvic floor re-education in women using a hypothesis driven UX approach
Process
1. Primary Research - Given the sensitive nature of the topic we designed and validated an emotions toolkit to prompt participants to freely talk about emotional experiences. I also contributed to authoring clinical trial proposal to answer key research questions around the technical and experiential implementation. My biomedical background helped in technical simulations/iterations on MATLAB.
2. Secondary Research - Using an evidence based method, designed a gamified Kegel routine for new as well as seasoned patients.
3. Prototyping - Technical implementation of EMG biofeedback system using MATLAB, user journey mapping, information architecture, high fidelity digital prototype's responsive to real time EMG data stream.
This project is under NDA. I'll be happy to walk you through detailed design process upon request.
