This project started out with an initial assumption: RDN’s need an easy and fast way to check drug/food and drug/supplement interactions when recommending nutrition plans to clients.

Time to validate this assumption. I started at a high-level by asking:

What struggles to current RDN’s face when working in a practice setting?

Through secondary research, my findings uncovered a common theme among RDN’s: information-overload when it comes to counseling and making recommendations to their clients. 

Health and nutrition are highly individualistic and they can often feel they are missing information that can sometimes be life threatening to a patient. 

There's a vast amount of information and considerations when it comes to the ways drugs interact with one another and can be difficult for doctors and RDN’s to keep up with this knowledge in a fast paced environment. 

“As health care becomes more multidisciplinary, dietitians increasingly treat patients suffering from a range of pathologies and that take multiple medications, the invaluable role of dietitians has grown (mental health, primary care, hospital).

Many of these medications have food interactions or provoke nutritional deficiencies. Therefore a strong background in pharmacology is necessary for dietitians to provide the best patient care possible, educate patients and define a diet plan that minimizes drug-related adverse side effects.”

Eureka Journals 2018

Time to talk to RDN’s themselves…

Moving forward with my assumption that RDN’s needed an easy and trustworthy way to track drug interactions and make recommendations to clients, I established surveys and interviews to validate my assumptions and learn about RDN’s needs and challenges.

I turned to social media and my email list (I have a lot of RDN subscribers!), sent out a screener survey, and got 8 pieces of valuable feedback. I was able to conduct 4 video interviews. My lovely participants consisted of 3 RDN’s and one Holistic Nutritionist.

The goal was to get an understanding of how RDN’s manage nutrition recommendations when their client may be on medication or diagnosed with a disease that forbids the ingestion of certain food, drugs, and supplements.

Lots of insights…let’s try and make sense of them.

With all the notes and recordings from the interviews, I put everything in perspective, synthesized with the participants, and created the affinity maps, empathy maps, personas, and HMWs.

I was able to validate my assumption that RDN’s struggle with making recommendations while trying to recall relevant drug interactions.

Key Insights

I also learned that RDN’s not only struggle with drug interactions, but recommending proper supplements for a clients individual needs. Typically, they go to Facebook groups to ask for supplement recommendations, as they sometimes have trouble digging deeper into research on the fly. 

“Right now, my process is a bit all over the place. I ask for supplement recommendations in my RDN facebook groups if I do not have time to dig into PubMed, then I craft a google sheet that lists the various supplements out and what to look for and avoid. I feel this could be made easier, but for now, this is what I’m working with!”

Additionally, I learned that RDN’s struggled with easily sharing their recommendations and supplement / drug information with their clients. Their process feels “clunky” and “disorganized” when sharing meal plans, supplements, and lifestyle recommendations.

HOW IT STARTED….

HOW IT’S GOING…

These discoveries were a pivot point in my research as I shifted my main purpose and goal of the product from being only a drug interaction tool to a solution that that helps RDN’s make supplement recommendations that can easily be shared with clients.  

What’s the flow?

First, I focused on the onboarding process and adding a client to the system. For the tool to work properly, there needed to be an easy and frictionless way to gather a lot of information about clients. Things like diet, lifestyle, allergies, pregnancy status, and current medications and diagnosis were all important to know for the system to properly make recommendations and provide cautions.

To reduce cognitive overload, I envisioned a simple onboarding workflow that featured each step of the process on a single screen. I also explored what the “client chart” would look like, once recommendations are made by the system.

Wireframing allowed me to begin seeing the designs come to life.

Atomic Design

Time to get organized in Figma! Next up, I created the brand colors, fonts, as well as buttons, form inputs, grid systems, and drop shadows using the Atomic Design methodology. I went for a fresh, modern, and elevated brand that still felt professional and medical.

This entire project was insightful, challenging, and fun. As the sole UX designer for this project, I learned a lot with each phase of the process.

My biggest learning was the power of research and interviews. I uncovered new user challenges I did not before my interviews and my assumptions were challenged with each RDN I interviewed. It helped me to truly build a useful product vs something flashy.

I’d love to continue to evolve this project. Integrating the addition of chat functionality with clients would be the next step into rounding out the process of intake, recommendation, and sharing. As well as continued testing, of course!

The Figma Files

Feel free to take a look at the Figma files, including my component library, branding, wireframes and mockups,