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<\/a>Maintaining blood sugar values in a safe range is the way to avoid the dangers and long-term complications of diabetes.\u00a0 The best way to know how well your insulin or medication is controlling your blood sugar is to check it often, and log your numbers often. Diabetes is a disease that requires completely individualized care and without a log, it’s difficult for your doctor to treat you.<\/p>\nWe all know this, right? But how many of us actually log on a steady basis?\u00a0 Not many, because it’s tedious.\u00a0 But what if it weren’t?<\/p>\n
Thanks to software designer Elon Danziger and his fianc\u00e9e Yelena Rubinshteyn, who has type 1 diabetes, logging can now be fun, almost like a game.<\/p>\n
Elon and Yelena created LogFrog DB<\/a>, a diabetes tracking application for the iPhone and iPod Touch with powerful, innovative features and a fun look-and-feel.\u00a0 It allows users to log the four most important factors for daily diabetes management \u2013 blood glucose values, medicine, carbs, and exercise \u2013 as well as keeping notes and storing A1c values. Data can be easily exported via email in a variety of formats depending on patient and doctor preferences.\u00a0 A graphing tool is included to allow visualization of blood sugar trends over time, and graphs can be filtered to help reveal patterns around particular times of day, specific meals, exercise, etc.\u00a0 Other LogFrog features include averages, daily medication reminders, and glucose-check reminders.<\/p>\n I had the pleasure of talking to Elon and Yelena about LogFrog and its development.<\/p>\n Why did you create LogFrog?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Elon: <\/strong>Yelena had had trouble managing her diabetes for many years and her A1c was well into the danger zone.\u00a0 Despite all my efforts to encourage her to start tracking her diabetes with other apps, she didn\u2019t stick with any of them.\u00a0 So I said, \u201cWhat if we build one together just for you, will you use it then?\u201d<\/p>\n Yelena: <\/strong>I got excited and a new project was born.<\/p>\n What makes LogFrog better than the other logging apps out there? Better than pen-and-paper?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n At the moment the two main factors that make LogFrog better than other logging apps are (1) speed (entries take less than 5 seconds), and (2) a warm, non-clinical look-and-feel that makes logging feel less like a chore.\u00a0 Logging on a phone or other device that you carry around with you is easier than remembering to bring a pen and paper everywhere, and you are less conspicuous tapping a phone in a social setting than you are pulling out a notebook.\u00a0 You can also analyze and share data much more easily with a mobile device.<\/p>\n What about other logging apps makes them feel clinical? What does LogFrog do to change this feeling?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Yelena: <\/strong>Of course this is subjective and hard to put in words, but I didn\u2019t want to log my blood sugar numbers, and I needed to be convinced to do it.\u00a0 The standard gray, boring interfaces of other apps made me say, \u201cI don\u2019t feel like it.”\u00a0 When you want to motivate people to do something they don\u2019t really want to do, you can encourage them with visual triggers.\u00a0 Just having the functionality isn\u2019t enough.\u00a0 In LogFrog, the frog, for example, makes me smile, so logging has become almost a game I don’t want to quit.\u00a0 I’ve stuck with it long enough to form a habit.<\/p>\n What was the development process like– how long did it take? What did the back-and-forth between the two of you look like– was it Elon designing and Yelena overseeing? Were other people involved?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n We designed and developed the app beginning in May 2010 and by November 2010, we had an Apple-approved app in the App Store.\u00a0 We\u2019ve continued to develop the app, releasing one or two updates a month since then — in large part guided by user feedback and requests.<\/p>\n Elon:<\/strong> Once Yelena had explained what she needed to log and the type of analysis she wanted to do, I would put together design ideas, then show her mockups in Photoshop or on the iPhone Simulator on my computer.\u00a0 She would suggest additional features or improvements to my design.\u00a0 Most of this was before we had the nice backgrounds, textures, and frog illustrations, which my cousin Monia Nilsen and her boyfriend Rui Martins helped us with.\u00a0 They were great to help us on this project, which was originally and remains, a labor of love.<\/p>\n Yelena: <\/strong>As our design developed, Elon was coding it and bringing it to life.\u00a0 I began testing it and using it to track my own diabetes well before it was complete.\u00a0 All this work was done nights and weekends.\u00a0 We rarely got to sleep before 2:00 a.m., and we still often work very late as we continue to improve it.<\/p>\n Whose idea was the wheel of numbers and options?\u00a0 It is a relatively unique visual paradigm– how did you think of it? How do people respond to it?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Yelena: <\/strong>I didn\u2019t like a lot of Elon\u2019s early ideas, but once he showed me that last set of circles I thought we definitely had something interesting.<\/p>\n What sort of analysis and review does LogFrog make possible?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Yelena: <\/strong>The app lets you see trends in your blood sugar, especially around particular meals or at specific times of day.\u00a0 This can be very helpful for finding patterns and adjusting your behavior to attain better control, whether with your doctor or on your own day to day.\u00a0 For example, after logging for several months, I was able to see that my blood sugars were consistently high in late evenings and before bedtime.\u00a0 After pointing that out to my doctor, we agreed that I needed more insulin per gram of carbohydrate at dinnertime than I do during the rest of the day.<\/p>\n How many people are on the LogFrog team? Are they all after-hours, or do you have full-timers now?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s just the two of us!\u00a0 No other staff, no contractors.\u00a0 It continues to be our nights and weekends project.<\/p>\n What sort of feedback have you received about the app? How has that changed the feature list and the development schedule?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n We\u2019ve received almost all positive feedback on our app, with frequent ideas for large and small features we could add.\u00a0 Some of our updates (like the recent 1.2.6) have been completely devoted to improvements users have asked for.<\/p>\n What are your plans for LogFrog long-term– a standalone logging app with more features? A suite of apps? The launchpad for a d<\/strong>ifferent project altogether?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n We have a roadmap for additional features posted on our wall, some of which are already under development.\u00a0 We\u2019ve recently formed a User Advisory Council which we are currently surveying for feature priority preferences and feedback on design ideas.<\/p>\n Elon:<\/strong> We want to make the best, most powerful, most motivating app that we can for Yelena and other people with diabetes.<\/p>\n Yelena:<\/strong> As far as immediate plans, we are about to release a free 30-day trial version of LogFrog so people can experience the interface and see if it works for them. We would love to build LogFrog DB into a business one day.\u00a0 For now it remains a project of passion that is not profitable but brings a great deal of personal reward.<\/p>\n Are there any plans for integrating LogFrog with existing medical devices (like pumps and CGMs) or medical software (like electronic medical records or care management programs)?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n We would love to integrate with medical devices and medical software, but as far as we know all the device-and -software makers run closed systems that we can\u2019t access. We would be very open to any opportunity to make tracking and sharing data simpler, and we would welcome more open systems.<\/p>\n How has developing and marketing the app changed your relationship with each other? Does working together work?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n For us it works well.\u00a0 We love having a project together that we\u2019re both passionate about.\u00a0 Occasionally we need a break from LogFrog and don\u2019t work on it for a week or two so we can go back to being just a couple.\u00a0 And sometimes we don\u2019t see eye-to-eye on the way a feature should be designed, but we\u2019re both good at expressing and understanding points of view.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Elon: <\/strong>The wheel of numbers and options was my idea, which came after a couple weeks of exploration of half-circles and more standard interfaces.\u00a0 At first, my idea was just that the circle would let you choose an entry mode, but then I started wondering if the circle interface could lend itself to the entire entry process.\u00a0 The biggest challenge was going to be getting all the numbers to fit around a circle and be big enough to touch (since fingers are a lot bigger than mouse pointers).\u00a0 Once I mocked up the circle, divided it into twelve wedges and found that the physical area of each number was going to be within Apple\u2019s guidelines for usable touch interfaces, I got excited.\u00a0 I felt I had found a winning design solution.<\/p>\n