Portable Nasometry Software
How might we make nasometry assessment accessible and portable for speech pathologists treating children with cleft palate and researchers studying hypernasality?
Product Design, Full-Stack Development with Baly Martinez, Jasper Doan, Kaila Long, Shayla Ho, Vaani Mathur
I participated in the design and development process for our senior capstone project under the Department of Informatics at UC Irvine.
Problem Space
We went into understanding the relevance of the need for nasometry after being assigned this project for our senior capstone.
According to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Cleft lip and palate is a prominent common birth defect in the United States.
According to CLAPLA, more than 50% with cleft palate need speech and language therapy.
After conducting user interviews with speech language pathologists across the United States, we had these key insights.
A speech therapist at Children’s Minnesota said that, “Out of the box, [nasometers are] completely unintuitive”
Manual data entry: Handwritten notes transferred to paper charts, then typed into EMR system.
No integration: Nasometer data doesn't feed into medical record systems.
Time-consuming workflow: Multiple steps to capture, record, and document results
User Stories & Flow
We initially started off with two user stories. Our project partners, within UC Irvine's School of Language Science and Department of Plastic Surgery, influenced the primary requirements of our forming application.
Initially, we created our user stories and personas based on these two primary users. We would come to also include researchers based on stakeholder feedback.
Our intent with our user flow was to provide minimal friction for our clinicians who may administer many tests in one session.
Initially, we created our user stories and personas based on these two primary users. We would come to also include researchers based on stakeholder feedback.
Low-Fidelity Mockups
Since our target device was Android, I was drawn to a simple list view for patients and their profiles using Material Design 2.
Originally, I envisioned a navigation bar to easily switch between patients and the evaluation screen. However, we decided to eliminate it to focus the users onto one patient. In other words, tests should always be associated with a patient.
Mockups for the patient list and profile views, using frame0 and Figma.
Tech Stack
React Native & Javascript: Although our project partners envisioned an Android app for their low cost availability in the market, we went with a familiar framework that could also allow universal compatibility with other devices running iOS or through the Web in the future.
Java: To interface with the transmitter connected to the Android phone, we had to create a React Native Module that handled device selection and reading audio.
Supabase (PosgreSQL & Authentication): We used Supabase for their database and authentication capabilities, allowing reachable endpoints to store patient data. Should our app go to market, our partners can be assured HIPAA compliance.
On-Device Screenshots
After more careful iteration, we aligned our linear user-flow with each of our designs. We heavily used shapes to group related information together, and to inform the user of actions such as creating a new patient or test.
Ease of use: Users can easily identify their patients from a list and start a test anywhere.
Clear, actionable results: Provides a nasalance score instantly after recording with compatible hardware, and allows easy comparison among past tests through a graph or CSV export.
Going Further
Our team won first place at the ICS Project Expo under the Informatics tract.
With a design like this, nasomEATR has the potential to expand the reach of speech language pathologists on things like mission trips abroad to help cleft palate patients across the world and in remote areas.
With only the nasometer device and an Android phone, our nasomEATR makes cleft palate patient care accessible anywhere.