Health-e Journey

Health-e Journey: An Application in Collaboration with Excellus BC/BS
In 2019 I received a grant from NCMIC (National Chiropractic Mutual Insurance Company) in the amount of $50,000 to work on a project with the medical director from Excellus BC/BS.

Project Proposal: In April of 2019, Dr. Brian Justice and Dr. Maria Spoto came to Professor DiRisio’s Advanced Interactive Design class to give a brief on the context for the app that would be developed. A few of the students in that class were chosen and hired to work under Professor DiRisio to continue the work and develop the app. The brief included statistics on the prevalence of chronic back pain in the United States, common causes and treatments for chronic back pain, as well as the statistics that showed the connections to people who get treated for chronic back pain and those who have developed dependencies for opioids. One of the main motivations for the creation of this app is to encourage people who are experiencing back pain to understand the risks of treating with opioids as well as giving them the knowledge and resources to live preventatively with healthy diets, exercise, sleep habits, and relationships as well as encouraging them to consider other options like Chiropractors, Physical Therapy, or even classes that teach yoga or Tai Chi. The hope of the team working on this app is that its users will become educated about their options when it comes to healthcare and are intelligent consumers as well as individuals that are committed to living healthy lives.

Over the course of 2 years, I worked with 7 students, 5 of them Graphic Design students, to design the UI (User Interface) and work with the following parameters:

Usability studies

Color studies

Data collection

Develop gamification

Design of assets

Testing

I also employed 2 Game Design (computer science) students to work on the gamification and the development of the back end:

Worked on gamification

Worked on the development of code

Two awards were won based on the design of the UI:

UCDA (University and College Designer Association) Award of Excellence

IDA (International Design Awards) Gold Award