Standing on the shoulders of giants: adapting open-source work for community needs.
A big part of my work at Tidepool was focused on designing and proving the safety of an in-app training to Tidepool Loop, a closed-loop, automated insulin delivery system for people living with type 1 diabetes.
That application is still under development. But because of Tidepool’s deep commitment to sharing their work open source (BSD 2-Clause License) back to the community, I was able to build on that work and adapt it for an upcoming release of the DIY Loop app.
I’m personally very proud of this work for a couple of reasons.
First, as we sent my T1 daughter, Hazel, to school for the first time last fall, we desperately needed a clear, concise way to onboard her school care team to Loop. After trying to do piecemeal versions and high-level overviews, I went back to the work I knew had been validated, pressure tested and proven clear and safe. It did that job just as flawlessly in the wild as it had in our months of human factors testing. It’s a testament to the world-class team at Tidepool.
Second, because I needed to replace all the Tidepool branded assets quickly, I reached for the original story-board sketches I did on my iPad one morning in a coffee shop. I always liked the looseness and life in those sketches and was happy to find a use for them ☺️.
Note: This in-app training is designed for the version of Loop now only available in the experimental Dev Branch.
It differs significantly from the main branch at time of writing in that it contains many UI enhancements and risk mitigations that came from my work analyzing use-related risks shared by the public DIY Diabetes community. These enhancements have also been shared back by Tidepool to the DIY Loop project and should land in the main branch later this year.