DDI UC San Diego

We strive to make diabetes invisible.

Our Mission

01

We aim to make diabetes invisible by redesigning technology that requires less time and energy towards the everyday management of diabetes. With a strong focus on empathy and human needs, we work with the community, industry, and healthcare providers to discover new design opportunities to support and enhance diabetes management.

21 finished projects

Diabetes technology is changing rapidly.

Today, thanks to data obtained from Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM), insulin can be automatically administered through Automatic Insulin Delivery systems. This opens new possibilities to more immediate and effective reactions to changing glucose levels.

How can we empower patients to be in control of their diabetes? How can we help users build trust to these technologies? How can technology help make diabetes more invisible?

People.

We focus on people with diabetes and their support, from lead users, groups, and advocates to researchers, and industry partners

Diabetes.

We treat diabetes care as a complex socio-technical system, not a collection of isolated tools and tasks

Technology.

We foster human-technology teamwork by designing technologies that work with, rather than against, people.

Innovation.

We design for continuous innovation, empowering people with diabetes to live their lives as they want

Our story

02

The Diabetes Design Initiative began with a conversation over coffee, with founders Lars Müller and Ben West describing the needs for community integration as essential to the innocative technology landscape. DDI was founded to go beyond finding these needs and providing tangible solutions.

Our Partners

Thank you to our current partners: Dexcom, Tandem, UCSD Design Lab, and UC San Diego Health System.

We are the combined strength of all disciplines at UC San Diego.

The Design Lab is located within the California Institute of Telecommunication and Information Technology, which gives us freedom to move seamlessly across all the departments, schools, and divisions of the university. Our advisory board includes people from Management, Engineering, Visual Arts, Theater, and the Social Sciences.

View our projects

Our team

03

Led by Eliah Aronoff-Spencer, director of the Center for Health Design, Design Lab fellow Lars Müller, and Ben West, a Nightscout developer and person with diabetes himself, DDI is re-thinking how healthcare technology is designed.