Improving the Chronic Cough Patient-HCP communication with an app

Our pharmaceutical client recognized the need to help patients and physicians create a sense of urgency around an under-defined and de-legitimized condition. They were seeking digital avenues (an app) to shift the approaches to health and care for this chronic condition.

Developing effective digital medicine tools is an intensive and complex process. For this challenge, we took an approach that combined ethnography, behavioral science, and experience design to help our clients build an app that would optimize engagement.

Thematic over Scripted – to understand the context behind the participants, contextualizing their answers and behaviors, and ultimately understanding the deeper why behind their actions.

Implicit over (solely) Explicit - leveraging projective tasking, memory exercises, and naturalistic observation to understand how a digital tool is implicitly experienced and understood.

Co-creative and Collaborative over One-Sided - leveraging co-creative methods and frameworks to ensure that we are learning from the end-user and incorporating the learnings as we move through the multiple creative iterations.

We impacted two key areas:

1. Uncovered implicit barriers to app usage

2. Identified the strategies needed to elevate the UX and foster adoption and long-term engagement