Why this project exists
Healthcare often depends on a person’s ability to explain what happened. When did the symptoms begin? What came first? What changed next? What were you doing? Did you take a medication or record a measurement?
These questions matter, but people are often asked to answer them after time has passed—while sick, tired, frightened, distracted, or being questioned quickly.
When Did It Start? helps preserve the event before someone has to reconstruct it.
Where the tool intervenes
The project sits between the first experience of symptoms and the later conversation with a healthcare professional. It helps users preserve timing, sequence, context, measurements, actions, subjective experience, and uncertainty while the details are still fresh.
The goal is not to decide what the symptoms mean. The goal is to create a clearer account of what the user experienced and reported.
The public gap
Many health tools belong to a specific healthcare system, require an account, focus on diagnosis or triage, or are designed for long-term symptom tracking. When Did It Start? has a narrower purpose: create one useful record of one unfolding health event, without requiring enrollment or giving the website possession of the answers.
What it is—and is not
It is: a structured memory-support tool, a symptom-history builder, and a locally generated timeline the user controls.
It is not: a symptom checker, diagnostic service, medical assessment, treatment recommendation, patient portal, or permanent health record.
About the creator
When Did It Start? was created by Nick Madison, an independent designer, researcher, and scientist focused on building simple tools for complex human problems.
His work explores how timing, sequence, uncertainty, observation, and lived experience can be preserved more clearly before they are flattened by memory, language, or institutional systems.
Nick developed this project after repeatedly seeing how difficult it can be for people to explain a health event accurately once the details have begun to blur.
He designs public-interest tools that simplify the interaction without flattening the information.