Titulo Estágio
NUTRIApro - Co-designing a web app for nutritionists to care for 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 web app to support nutritionists in caring for women with gestational diabetes. Potential features of the web app include: creating meal plans, inputting nutrition recommendations, and personalising the patients’ mobile app. We expect the web app to be developed in React.
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 evaluation with nutritionists. There are few systems for nutritionists being developed, but we believe this to be the first one being specifically developed to support the management of gestational diabetes.
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 1
Workplan (1st semester):
- Literature review on gestational diabetes and treatment interventions by nutritionists;
- Literature review of co-design and usability testing methods;
- Prepare co-design workshops with nutritionists;
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 2
Workplan (2nd semester):
- Conduct co-design workshops with nutritionists;
- Design and develop web 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 and the work of their nutritionists;
- Proficiency in English.
Observações
MSc Thesis to be supervised by Prof. Paula Alexandra Silva (DEI).
References:
- 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).
- Example of nutrition system in the market: https://nutrium.com/en
Orientador
Francisco Maria Cruz Nunes
francisco.nunes@aicos.fraunhofer.pt 📩