Supporting Veterans Living with Chronic Pain
CLIENT
Chronic Pain Centre for Excellence for Canadian Veterans
SERVICES
UX Research & Design, Co-Design Workshops, UI Design, Branding
MY ROLE
Design & Research Lead
HIGHLIGHTS
First digital tool ever created to support Canadian veterans living with chronic pain
Qualitative research findings published in the Journal of Military, Veteran and Family Health (JMVFH)
The first of its kind:
A digital tool built for and co-designed with Canadian veterans to support them in self-managing their chronic pain.
CHALLENGE
Veterans are an under-served population whose lived experiences are far from similar to those of standard civilians. Military service often leaves veterans with permanent mental and physical health impacts, including chronic pain. The Chronic Pain Centre for Excellence for Canadian Veterans sought to provide a digital tool to support veterans in their pain experience, while also informing research to improve their care.
APPROACH
To better understand the needs and challenges of this population, our team launched an in-depth research and co-design process with Canadian veterans living with chronic pain as well as pain research experts. This included remote context labs with 50 veterans from across the country, as well as co-design sessions and remote usability testing. We also conducted interviews with 10 pain clinics and researchers as well as feedback sessions with them to ensure clinical validity and reliability in our design.
Insight Highlights
The following artifacts were used in during virtual co-design sessions with veterans to better understand and validate the different use cases for the application:
Making sense of chronic pain
SOLUTION
Out of a long research and co-design process emerged Aurora; a progressive web app that empowers veterans to take control of and make sense of their pain. Featuring 4 core value propositions, Aurora enables veterans living with chronic pain to track the things that impact their pain and well-being, see trends and gain meaningful insights, receive tailored educational resources, and connect with peers for support.
Pain & wellness tracking
By tracking pain symptoms and wellness factors through ‘check-ins', veterans gain concrete insights over time that empower them in better understanding how to self-manage. Users can easily customize what they want to track, from pain intensity and interference, to medications, sleep and weather.
Educational library
Veterans have access to an extensive library of trustworthy and clinically vetted resources tailored to their particular experience and needs. The library also supports various learning preferences through offering multimedia formats; video, audio, courses.
Trends & insights
After completing check-ins through the platform, Veterans can view their trends and gain customized insights to help them make sense of their pain and empower them to self-manage. At the same time, this feature supports them in better articulating their pain experience to their care team, family and friends.
