Quell

Anxiety relief

Symptom tracking

Analysis over time

Purpose

Tracking chronic pain is difficult. To this day, pain journals are the top recommendation my medical professionals for tracking, but the reality is they are tedious to maintain. Quell provides an intuitive solution: a pressure point massage tool that logs usage.

Product

Quell is a portable device and app that provide a comforting way to track one's pain episodes. Designed as a pressure point massager, the device is a useful tool for alleviating pain and anxiety during an episode. Whenever its in use, it instantly starts an entry in the app's pain log, streamlining the process of capturing crucial information.
Pairing: Lifting the magnetic cap reveals Quell's charging port and indicator LEDs. The blue LED indicates when Quell is paired to a device over Bluetooth, while a row of white LEDs indicates battery level.
Starting: A quick triple squeeze let's Quell know you want to record a session. If the your phone is not nearby, Quell temporarily saves the data on-device to be synced later. The same sequence ends a session.
During: Soft vibrations comfort and augment Quell's function as a pressure point massage tool.
Ending: Side rocking toggles through pain level indication, one through ten, at the end of the session. Discrete elements were selected over numbers to improve legibility at all angles. Richer data can be input in the app later.

User Journey

1: Pain strikes

Maggie suffers from occasional gastrointestinal pain. Although she's grown accustomed to it, it's important for her to keep track of flair-ups so she can keep her doctor informed of the severity.

2: Introduce Quell

Fortunately, a friend recently informed her about Quell, which helps her track her pain episodes at home and on the go.

3: Release Anxiety

Regardless of where the pain is, Quell acts as an effective stopgap, massaging key pressure points in the hand to reduce anxiety.

4: Log episode

Whenever Quell is activated, an entry is immediately made in the Quell app. By simply logging the time and duration of the episode, Maggie has effortlessly captured the most important data, but more can be added to the entry in app, like pain quality, location, and external factors.

5: Capture trends

With consistent use over time, Quell can digest a large set of data and make it easy to spot patterns like recurring times of day, increasing frequency, and other useful trends that can paint a clear picture of her progress.

6: Communicate clearly

Prepared with data and a summary of her progress, Maggie can clearly communicate with a medical professional about how she's doing, empowering her to get the help she needs.

Personalized onboarding. Chronic pain is a unique experience for everyone, so Quell begins the app experience with a brief survey to understand your needs and goals. Afterward, a Bluetooth pairing process is initiated within the app.
Easy and discreet tracking anywhere. One of the challenges with pain journals is that pain can strike at any time. Quell makes it easy to discreetly manage pain in the moment.

Process

Despite the measurable prevalence and impacts of chronic pain, basic communication is one of the biggest barriers to treatment. Pain, by nature, makes it difficult to focus on anything else. Recognizing this challenge, I partnered with Samantha Clarke from the RCA to design a solution that effectively intercepts in the moment of pain.
Mapping out the barriers that exist with the current method of pain journaling helped define key criteria for an appropriate solution.
Guide the user through unfamiliar medical terms.
Prompt the user with further questions and reminders.
Comfort the user during moments of pain
Inform the user with synthesized data insights.
Ground the user in a strong mind-body connection.
Translate the user's needs for medical professionals.
Early concepts focused on intervening in the moment of pain, taking on many different forms such as typical medical equipment, items of ritual, and wearable devices that could be reached for in an instant; however, many of these solutions seemed impractical to adopt or imposing on daily life. We hypothesized that a simple, squeezable object like a stress ball could balance portability and prevalence.
Verplank's interaction design framework, idea/error, metaphor/scenario, display/control, reveals how we thought of Quell in its early stages.
I cast a wide net to explore different forms, systematically defining different profiles that could be comfortable in the hand and initially landing on a something resembling a tool grip.
A major learning moment was when we realized the form was becoming too specialized and as a result less intuitive. We responded to this feedback by returning to the idea of the stress ball, opting for a round shape that invited more exploration, bordering on a sense of play.
To confirm the need for haptics, I retrofit Quell's exterior with a fully-functional and rechargeable haptic module. Users showed a strong preference for the addition of vibration.
We personally tested Quell in a variety of field contexts like libraries, public transit, and parks to evaluate its performance as a discreet and accessible alternative to pain journals.