How HeadChannel Built A Life in a Day for The Method

The Method trains professionals through experiential learning, with a method shaped by actors, directors and writers. Its clients include Unilever, AON, Network Rail, EE and Compare the Market. A Life in a Day began as an in-house patient awareness programme for a global pharmaceutical company.

The Challenge

The Method wanted healthcare and pharma professionals to understand what it is like to live with a serious illness such as Crohn's disease, heart failure or cancer, because greater empathy leads to more satisfied patients and better health outcomes. Learning about a condition wasn't enough: the user had to become the patient, at home and at work, for 24 hours or more.

The app also had to serve a global audience across time zones and languages, for users who wouldn't always have a signal.

The Approach

The Method researched each condition with patients and clinicians, and a joint project team built the app around that research.

• A medical kit. Before the day starts, users receive a sealed kit to keep with them and open when told: wearables that simulate discomfort, medical items, and smells and liquids for a visceral effect.
• Challenges. The app triggers up to 150 inter-related events, with consequences that depend on what the user does: getting up an hour early to make a breakfast for a special diet, or finding a bathroom within two minutes.
• Role play. Professional actors phone users as doctors, bosses and friends, with test results or questions about what happens at work if the condition progresses.
• Reporting. Users make choices, enter data and add photos as they go. Reports show each client what it wants to learn, such as how empathy changes and which challenges are hardest.
• Journey Creator. Non-technical administrators build and edit journeys from templates, from one control panel, and could change them live.
• Built for a global audience. A translation module exports the text for translation and imports it in one click. Challenges download at the start of each journey, so the app works offline, and follow the user's time zone. Microsoft Azure hosting scales to thousands of users, with servers close to each programme.

The app was designed to meet international security standards for medical content and user data, and the admin panel uses permission levels.

The Outcome

A 2018 study led by the University of Westminster found statistically significant gains in patient empathy, in understanding of how the condition affects work, friends and family, and in confidence talking to stakeholders about it.

Programmes so far cover gastroenterology, oncology and cardiovascular disease, across Europe and the United States, and the app has been translated into ten languages. At the Learning Technologies Awards 2020 it won Gold for Best Use of Mobile Learning and Silver for Best Use of Simulation or Virtual Environment for Learning.