Time

Aug - Oct 2022

Industry

Information Visualization

members

Haoran Xu

Role

Product Design

Seeknode in a Nutshell...

Problem

Misleading online health information causes anxiety and misdiagnoses.

Solution

Seeknode visualizes symptom-disease relationships, empowering informed health decisions.

Google does not reveal connections between symptoms and diseases, often providing the most attention-grabbing answers. And for the most part, that could be cancer.

Why do symptom searches often lead to cancer-related results

Discover the connections between symptoms and disease and provide more accurate information to educate people before they get professional advice.

I identified datasets related to symptoms and diseases, conducting research to uncover meaningful insights.

HOW MIGHT WE...

The quotes from user


I need to understand if my symptoms could indicate a serious disease to decide whether I should visit a hospital.


I have the chronic disease, I need to know what the fetal symptoms and good lifestyle are.


I wish I have a more trustful data source to search the disease.

Doctor appointments are complicated, so I research online for the existing symptoms, and see related diseases.

What is the correlation between symptom and disease. (What is the most intuitive way to present the information for the ordinary people to understand the connection between their symptoms and possible disease.)

What is the way to reveal the relationship between severity and symptom, or even more, the relationship between severity and disease.

How do we predict the potential symptoms and precautions based on the related symptom/disease.
How do we inform the people who have the chronic diseases the potential risk symptom and the precautions of the disease.
01
02
03
03A

Data Exploration QUESTION

dataset Overview

I used the “Disease Symptom Prediction Dataset” to explore the data visualization, which contains most of the details that the users want from pre-diagnosis disease.

*The data structure
https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/itachi9604/disease-symptom-description-dataset?select=dataset.csv

Usability Test results

After the tests, I collected the results and rank them into a list, which I followed to iterate my prototype.

Most of our users found that the Wireframe 01 is the most potential prototype and can solves their problem in both scenarios.

I found Wireframe 01 to be the most effective approach for identifying diseases and symptoms due to its clear node hierarchy and responsive interactions.

- Sam Gu

How Do Professionals Work?

Most of the professionals working in the medical industry use the Disease Database to search for precise information and connections.

However, most disease databases are overly complex and lack user-friendly designs.

Scenario 01 - Search While Sick

Daniel is feeling cold and fatigue. He needs to identify the possible disease and its severity.

Daniel can easily understand the relationship of the current symptoms and the related/possible diseases from the graph.

I highlight the selected node and its connected node in order to help people quickly filter the information.

Highlight Symptom and Diseases connections

Daniel can quickly assess the severity of possible diseases related to his symptoms, including precautions and detailed descriptions of each disease. Which can offer the user sufficient information to decide does he need to go to hospital.

I color coded the severity for the first look. The red text is always been a indicator to remind people for seeking professional advice.

Severity Indicator

Scenario 02 - search for chronic Disease information

Galvin knows what type of chronic disease he has. However, he wants to you what is the fatal symptoms and what is the precautions for the disease.

SeekNode provides Galvin with tailored recommendations based on his search history.

I implement this feature since it will help people with the existing disease gather more information.

AI suggested reading

Galvin can search the disease he have for quick access.

For the patient who already know the disease but just want to discover the symptoms, the searchbar can help them.

Search Feature

Galvin can discover which specific symptoms indicate the disease he has.

The feature can help the users to know the context of the symptom towards a specific disease.

Symptoms detail based on connected disease

Target User

Defining the user, or patient, of the product based on previous research.

Daniel - Budget Health Seekers

Budget-conscious freelancer with health concerns, seeking reliable tools and knowledge to make informed healthcare decisions, minimize unnecessary visits, and reduce anxiety.

Galvin - Chronic Health Managers

Busy professionals who need efficient health management solutions to monitor and manage chronic conditions within limited time constraints

The next step

What if we are only use the network visualization to present disease and symptoms network, but also the knowledge database for the humankind, the Wikipedia.


Envisioning a new type of search engine that not only provides answers but also contextualizes information and highlights connections within the knowledge network.

* Images from my ongoing project, Utopedia VR

key iterations

In order to inspire more people

The project is open-sourced with GNU License on Github

© Copyright 2025 • All Rights Reserved

+1 (323) 616 5096

haoranfuture@gmail.com