Titulo Estágio
NUTRIAmobile - Co-designing a mobile app for women with gestational diabetes
Local do Estágio
Rua Alfredo Allen 455/461, 4200-135 Porto, Portugal
Enquadramento
Motivation:
Gestational diabetes (GD) is a condition that appears during pregnancy and can seriously impact the health of both the mother and the foetus. Unless blood sugar levels are well controlled, gestational diabetes can increase the risk of pregnancy complications and non-communicable diseases for both the mother and the child. To avoid these complications, women with gestational diabetes need to carefully monitor their sugar levels and implement relevant changes to their diet, which can be extremely challenging, as women need to learn and adopt novel behaviours in a short period of time.
Nutritionists follow women with gestational diabetes at the hospital, every 2-4 weeks, but the patients still need to learn a number of practices and skills in their everyday life.
Objetivo
Objectives:
The goal of this thesis is to co-design and develop a mobile app to support the self-care and learning of women with gestational diabetes. Potential features of the app, as identified in the fieldwork, include: meal reminders, glucose measurement reminders, meal plan display, meal/recipe recommendations (algorithm under development in NUTRIA), and nutrition tips. If interested, a student could explore gamification in the implementation of the nutrition tips. We expect the mobile app to be developed in React Native.
Project:
The project NUTRIA (funded by FCT) is developing a system to support women with gestational diabetes, which includes a mobile app for patients, a web app for nutritionists, and a meal recommendation system engine. This thesis would be integrated into the project, and benefit from the interviews and observations previously conducted, as well as the recruitment of patients and nutritionists involved in the NUTRIA project.
Innovative aspects:
The main innovative aspect behind this work is the co-design and evaluations with women with gestational diabetes and their nutritionists. There are some mobile apps for women with gestational diabetes, but they are usually poor in terms of functionality, being restricted to a few screens with text on symptoms or self-care (Kalhori et al. 2020). Supporting practical aspects of living with gestational diabetes, such as remembering meals or measurements, is an innovative technological aspect to explore in this project.
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 1
Workplan (1st semester):
- Literature review on self-care and treatment of gestational diabetes;
- Literature review of co-design and usability testing methods;
- Review smartphone apps and technologies in the literature to support the self-care of gestational diabetes;
- Prepare co-design workshops with women with gestational diabetes and nutritionists;
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 2
Workplan (2nd semester):
- Conduct co-design workshops with women who have or had gestational diabetes and nutritionists;
- Design and develop mobile app using React Native or Flutter;
- Conduct usability tests with end-users;
- Report results and write thesis;
Condições
Profile:
- Background in informatics, multimedia design, or similar;
- Good social skills for interacting with participants;
- Interest in understanding the issues of women with gestational diabetes;
- Proficiency in English.
Observações
MSc Thesis to be supervised by Prof. Paula Alexandra Silva (DEI).
References:
- Kalhori et al. (2020) “Quality Evaluation of English Mobile Applications for Gestational Diabetes: App Review using Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS)”, Current Diabetes Reviews, (2020) 16: 1.
- Kyto et al. (2022) “Behavior Change App for Self-management of Gestational Diabetes: Design and Evaluation of Desirable Features”, JMIR Human Factors 2022; 9(4).
Orientador
Francisco Maria Cruz Nunes
francisco.nunes@aicos.fraunhofer.pt 📩