Oshi
IBD Management Platform
Oshi is a mobile application that helps patients with Inflammatory
Bowel Disease (IBD) - Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis - understand and manage
their condition. Oshi seeks to improve the lives of IBD patients by providing patients a personalized
resource to understand their disease, cope, and learn strategies to improve their
lives.
BCG Digital Ventures incubated the MVP of Oshi in partnership with one of the largest global healthcare companies, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, over the course of a 7 month period. My role was to lead the research and design work stream for the MVP in collaboration with 30+ designers, product managers, business strategists, engineers, venture builders, growth hackers, and content editors.
Research and User Testing
Product Design Strategy
UX and Visual Design
Understanding the problem
IBD effects over 3 million US patients and 11 million globally. It not only affects how patients physically feel, but also impacts their lifestyle. IBD can be debilitating and sometimes lead to life-threatening complications. The diagnosis can be a lengthy process and not straightforward. There is also a social stigma associated with the disease that typically leads to isolation and depression. Current solutions have failed to transform IBD and empower patients to improve outcomes, due to:
Lack of patient-centricity on design and usability
Island solutions address individual pain points rather than taking an integrated, systemic perspective
Lack of personalization
Lack of appropriate investment and focus
I conducted a competitive analysis to identify our competitors and understand their strengths and weaknesses in relation to our product as we continued to test and refine the experience. It helped the team refine our strategy and uniquely position Oshi in a fragmented market.
Research phase
The research phase was 3 parts: Ethnographic research, concept testing and usability testing. We sought to uncover the behaviors, motivations, and pain points of IBD patients throughout their diagnosis journey while also understanding the likelihood of adoption and further validating our ideas. We conducted both in-person and remote call interviews with 20+ patients and physicians across various ages and geographic locations. We worked hand-in-hand with patients and physicians to develop and design Oshi’s core feature set.
Persona
Based off the patterns and trends we uncovered from our research with patients, we came up with a persona that focused on their behaviors, pain points, goals and needs that helped to shape our product to ensure we were meeting user needs.
The solution and core feature set
The core feature set was developed and prioritized from the research based on user needs, feedback from concept testing and business goals.
Learn
Personalized content
Oshi provides content for patients at the most critical moments of their disease: coping, treatment options, and strategies to manage their condition. Users can read original content on IBD that is personalized to their condition, time of diagnosis, behaviors, interests, and concerns. The recommendation module explicitly serves the patient relevant content based on their aggregated data, as well as demotes previously viewed content.
Oshi's original content features authentic opinions and inspiring storied written by patients and trusted gastroenterologists. We launched with over 100 original articles. A new piece of content is posted daily focusing on disease education to lifestyle tips to IBD-friendly recipes. We developed a content strategy and editorial guidelines that were aligned in advance with the corporate partner so Oshi could publish quick and efficiently.
Tracking and Insights
Track and visualize progress
The unpredictable and unexplained nature of IBD makes patients feel out of control. Helping patients gain control, whether perceived or real, can help them both physically and emotionally through stress reduction. Tracking disease activity allows patients and their HCPs to potentially identify correlations among triggers, medication adherence, and lifestyle behaviors.
Users are able to view aggregated insights that are dynamically graphed based on the latest tracking data. Graphs allow the user to better understand their condition and identify any potential triggers to avoid. Users can also email reports of their personal insights to caretakers and HCPs to improve communications and direct patient engagement.
Q&A
Peer and expert Q&A
Patients ask situation-specific questions and get answers from people like them or experts. HCPs believe patients do better through peer support than through support of HCPs and printed literature. Patients seek connection with peers who can help them through an isolating condition by allowing them to seek connection with peers who are at the same life stage and/or same IBD stage.
Users can post a question within a topic area and receive answers from vetted and recruited experts and other patient advocates who are active and transparent about their IBD. Patient and provider co-creators provide credibility and trust for the Oshi platform.
Visual design direction
We tested several variations of the visual design with user to see which ones resonated most, ultimately deciding on a strong and bold aesthetic and approach to the visual design. We incorporated bold typography with large type and imagery which allowed for fewer elements on the screen and helped draw the user in, editorial like compositions, and used vibrant bursts of bright color which complement the overall white pallet. Users were attracted to the bright and bold elements which brought a lightness to a darker phase of their life.
The results
Oshi successfully launched in June 2018 and received instant coverage in digital health media and patient social media at launch. It remains the leading IBD mobile platform to date and is loved across 5 geographies. Oshi has received multiple awards including the AGA award for product impact and the Top Chronic Disease Management App, Digital Health Awards.
