Helping people with diabetes translate data into decisions and behaviors that improve their lives.
Framing the barriers to product adoption & routine use
As #5 on Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in Healthcare, Dexcom provides life-saving digital tools to help people manage their diabetes. Despite its positive impact in the lives of early adopters, Dexcom’s core technology, continuous glucose monitoring or CGM, had yet to reach the mainstream of diabetes care. Dexcom engaged Upstream to help move their products and services from early adopters to the mainstream. To support this goal, Upstream engaged executives and a cross-functional team in stakeholder interviews and a customer journey mapping workshop to frame the barriers to product adoption and continued use. We then validated and refined the journey framework through in-depth journey interviews with patients and physicians. Some of the barriers included a lack of product awareness, a disconnect between data CGM provides and the daily decisions and behaviors of diabetics, and a belief among primary care physicians and diabetics that CGM is only useful for preventing extreme cases of hypoglycemia. The journey framework that emerged was used to identify key opportunities across the continuum of experience and prioritize cross-silo opportunities to open the mainstream market.
Identifying product solutions to increase adoption & routine use
While Dexcom pursued several marketing opportunities, Upstream focused on redesigning the product experience. We engaged mainstream patients and their healthcare providers to co-create and validate new experience concepts that improve and extend the value proposition of CGM. The approach leveraged a customized-designed toolkit that enabled patients and providers to create a CGM experience that provides value throughout a typical day. We were able to accurately define user experience flows, features, and the most effective ways to communicate in alignment with their goals and desires.
Driving implementation of the new product experience
To help Dexcom’s engineering team implement the new product experience, Upstream developed user-experience wireframes, screen artwork and functional guidelines for programming. We then worked with the team through the production cycle to troubleshoot technical challenges and ensure both design intent and functionality were maintained.
The overall effort resulted in the revolutionary transition of CGM to the phone and the world’s first FDA-approved continuous glucose monitoring app to hit the market. The app continues to be featured in Apple advertisements to this day, and Dexcom has successfully opened the mass market.
“Upstream’s process opened our minds to new ways of addressing our users’ needs and approaches for our products to cross from early adopters to the majority.”
- Director of Research & Development at Dexcom