Problem: Neuromarkers of health are primarily discussed with scientific lab jargon and are buried deep within scientific journals. They are not understandable, accessible, relatable, or meaningful to non-scientists wanting to engage with the information to improve their lives. This results in important information and discoveries not having the impact it could have on end-users’ wellbeing.
Solution: Take an end-user approach first and understand the end user’s perspective, understand how they prefer to engage with health neuromarker information, and be invited into building solutions designed for them.
Plan:
Aim 1: Gather partner participants for end-user testing. Ideal partner participants are people who have a specific neurologically related condition (migraines, autonomic dysfunction, ADHD, etc) who are likely more driven to be in tune with and interested in their health neuromarkers.
- Identify support groups, research labs, and healthcare providers that serve these populations.
- Build collaborations and partnerships with these groups.
- Onboard end users/people with the given conditions to feedback sessions for the following aims.
Aim 2: Work with these end-users to identify their current understanding of health neuromarkers.
- Identify the level of understanding end-users have of key health neuromarkers.
- Identify when end-users are most interested in engaging with information about their health neuromarkers.
- Identify what neuromarkers or neuromarker affects they care about.
Aim 3: Identify end-users’ preferred forms of engagement with neuromarker information.
- Identify what end-user personas exist and how this affects solution design.
- Collaborate with UI/UX, branding, and education expertise to make engaging content, mockups, and experiences on health neuromarkers that users will enjoy interacting with and do end-user testing to receive their feedback on these solutions.
- Provide opportunity for end-users to design solutions.
Aim 4: Build cross-discipline communities (or community platform) where lab researchers, end-users, and startup/tech platform builders can collaborate together to build better solutions.
- Create standards of engagement where all parties have a stake and are fairly involved.
- Invite each of these people (lab researchers, end-users, and startup/tech platform builders) to a place (forum, app, group chat, contact list) where they can connect together and share ideas, knowledge, and feedback.
- Host events and opportunities to further facilitate connections across backgrounds.
Future directions: After the following aims are completed different user personas and early-stage scalable systems can be identified and expanded to other populations (other conditions, other demographics, general population, etc)
Team Lead: Erin Magennis - has an educational background in neuroscience, scientific research experience across 5 disciplines, health-tech mobile app development experience, and is a community builder.