In-Form:
Senior Capstone
An informative and conversational help app for Dementia Caregivers
Overview
For my individual senior UX capstone class, I designed a mobile application that allows informal familial caregivers of persons with Dementia to have a safe space to communicate with other similar caregivers and also receive helpful credibly sourced information.
Project Details
Role: All Positions
Skills: User Research, Interviews, Affinity Diagram, Competitive Analysis, Low - High Fidelity Prototyping and Wireframing, Usability Testing, Experience Mapping
Tools: Adobe XD
Team: Me
Duration: January - May 2020
My Role
As this was my senior capstone project, I was the sole designer & researcher. I conducted all the research and interviews, created all the wireframes, and tested all the designs. I took on every aspect of the project and completed it alone. It was exciting and challenging to have my very own start to finish project.
Problem & Goal
There are more than 65 million people, 29% of the U.S. population, providing care for a chronically ill, disabled, or aged family member or friend during any given year and spend an average of 20 hours per week providing care for their loved one. There is a huge need for more resources to help these informal caregivers in their roles. My goal was to create an easy and efficient mobile application that can help these informal caregivers to better take care of their loves ones but to also better take care of themselves as well.
Timeline
Research: Literature Review & Interviews
For my secondary research, I looked at seven pieces of literature to gain a better understanding of caregivers and how they operate and the healthy and weak areas they experience in their daily lives. Those seven pieces included areas like: formal/informal caregiving, mental and physical challenges, caregiver knowledge and confidence and social support.
Lit Review Takeaways
Main Takeaways:
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- Dementia is associated with long care hours and physically demanding caregiving and that caregivers who are more satisfied with their social interactions show fewer negative psychological symptoms
- Informal caregivers also lack a lot of confidence as they do not always know if they are doing what is best for their loved one or the best practices for caring for them
- Support can come in many forms: instrumental, emotional, and informational (the information and knowledge can come from both health professionals and from those who have experienced similar situations)
Journey Map
With the research, I gathered I wanted to create a journey map to map out the average day of a caregiver and identify the actions, goals, touchpoints, and emotions they typically have throughout. My map can be seen below:
Map Takeaways:
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The bulk of the moments where caregivers would have in the moment questions would be during the day when they are providing the care
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The moments where they would be researching practices to use would be before and after they care for that person
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Caregivers also have touchpoints of wanting to discover tips for best practices and communicate with other caregivers and professionals
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Some of the main goals are to understand dementia, maintain proper knowledge of care, and communicate with other human beings
Competitive/Comparative Analysis
For my competitive/comparative analysis, I looked into existing caregiving apps and communication apps to gain insights into what is and is not working well within the designs of applications similar to my concept and to gain inspiration for my future designs. My analysis’ can be seen below:
Communication App Takeaways:
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Most of these communication apps only serve one basic chat feature, Slack does offer the opportunity to have more specific chat conversations
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I need to consider how intricate I want my chat features to be
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The idea of an image with a person seems like a nice visual to have especially for small group chats
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A simple clean UI seems to be a good move since these caregivers do not have a lot of free time and need something that is to the point and simple to use
Caregiving App Takeaways:
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A navigation bar at the bottom may be nice for ease of use
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Having a list of your favorite caregivers/popular caregivers in the area is really convenient and useful for quick contact and discovery
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Consider language and what you call the different chat groups and users involved
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Outpatient chat feature of the little bubbles of the members is really nice and visually appealing
Interviews
For my primary research, I conducted interviews with one informal caregiver who also runs a 50,000+ dementia caregivers Facebook group, one formal caregiver who works at an Alzheimer's care facility, and then had a shared interview with an informal caregiver and Alzheimer's podcast host that was run by my classmate Maddisen. My goal was to gain a better understanding as to what the biggest struggles caregivers face: feeling alone, poor health, need for more help, need for more communication, more understanding of how to care for the patient, and if there is time for an app to be used.
Informal Caregiver & creator of
50,000+ member FB dementia group
Formal Caregiver at
Alzheimer's care facility
Informal Caregiver & Alzheimer's podcast host
Interview Takeaways:
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Design a way for caregivers to communicate with others (bounce ideas off of, seek help, etc, someone to interact with)
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Some type of 24/7 chat feature to communicate with professionals (but they would have to be ones that have been in their shoes/worked with people with Dementia)
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Visual representation, photos and videos, of resources for caregiving rather than just having to read about it (they are exhausted and don't have the time or brainpower to read a ton of resources)
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Design a way for new caretakers with questions to easily have resources
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Design a way to vent to someone who can relate to them (could be a professional, other caregivers, friends, etc.)
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Doctors are often not very helpful at providing information, so provide them with a way to receive help from people who are more relatable
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Most informal caregivers do not know very much about the disease in the beginning so offer reliable resources that can educate them on certain things
Informal Co-Design
A 3-way chat with two informal caregivers who run a dementia care Facebook group (51,000 followers). I shared some ideas with them and we were bouncing ideas back and forth. These two talk to and help, thousands of caregivers every day so I knew they would have a good idea about the wants and needs of this user group.
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Topics: discussing the creation of a communication platform and informational aids
Takeaways:
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There is a big need to find adequate solutions to frequently experienced issues
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Still a gap in the market of caregivers needing support with certain aspects of care
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Many of the questions on their Facebook page come in anonymously, as caregivers are often embarrassed to ask specific questions
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“I think if you can create an online resource these carers can interrogate from home, then that would be a great asset”
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Being able to communicate with an individual that has walked in their shoes, a current or former caregiver
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Every single dementia patient is different so having multiple resources is important
Interview & Co-Design Takeaway Ideation
Design a way for caregivers to communicate with others, some type of 24/7 chat feature, design a way to vent to someone who can relate to them (could be a professional, other caregivers, friends, etc.)
Visual representation, photos and videos, of resources for caregiving rather than just having to read about it, design a way for new caretakers with questions to easily have resources, most informal caregivers do not know very much about the disease in the beginning so offer reliable resources that can educate them on certain things
Low-Mid Fidelity Designs
Inspired by the insights gained from the results from my paper prototype testing, I moved into creating some mid-fidelity wireframes. These designs focused on both the communication features as well as providing informative care resources to the caregiver.
Resource Search
Resource Topic Page
Resource Video
Chat Channel
Testing
For testing my low-fidelity designs, I asked participants how they would go about discovering resources for a specific topic like "bathing". Within my application there are multiple ways to find different types of resources depending on what the user was looking for. During this testing they could find resources from professionals or talk in chat groups that focused on specific topics like bathing.
Main Takeaways
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Add additional related resources to a chosen resource
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Hashtags are too confusing and the just stating the titles of chat rooms is too ambiguous to inform the user that those are in fact chat rooms
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Popular is not very relevant to the user, recommended chat rooms would be a lot more useful
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The ability to create a channel should be easy to find and placed on the same page as the “my channels” and “popular channels”
Final Designs
Here are the final designs for my app:
Home/Landing screen. This screen contains the three different research categories. It also now has filter and tag options to generate more specific searches. This screen also now has the chat rooms that are related to that specific topic.
Specific resource page. This screen contains the resource, where the resource is from, the save feature, the tag associated with the resource, the chat channels the resource is discussed in now with the join button and a better directional statement for easy understanding of chat rooms, and similar resources to the original resources.
Chat room page. This page is for communicating with others in a chat group about a certain topic, in this screen it is “bathing struggles”. Here the user can show their profile or remain anonymous. Access the 24/7 hotline, and choose to join and message the channel. Chat room sections (seen in nav bar) are taught in the onboarding process. Here the user can switch from the current chat room they are in to the page that contains all of their chat rooms.
All chat rooms. This page contains all the chat rooms the user is a part of, now recommended chat rooms that will frequently update the more they view resources, search, filter, and tag options, and create a chat room section.
Post Project Feedback & Revisions
When I presented my process and final designs to the class I received a lot of feedback from my peers and professors.
One thing that was suggested was that I could have worked on redesigning an already existing app, and I have admitted that I did not discover the National Alzheimer's app, Alzheimer’s Daily Companion and that a better move for this project most likely would have been redesigning their application for them. If I were to continue this project my next step would be to take the research and designs I have made and apply them to improving that app.
To give you a better understanding of Alzheimer’s Daily Companion, here are some of their screens:
Design suggestions: I can see where my design could be implemented to help improve this app. My visual resources would be very useful in addition to their article resources. My communication feature would help the users to quickly communicate with others vs. having to send an email of their question. My overall visual and interaction designs would also help make the app easier to navigate. In the future, it would be nice to redesign this app by implementing my research and designs.
Final Reflection
Looking back over the course of this semester I am really proud of the work I was able to accomplish and my ability to start and finish a project all on my own. It was definitely harder than I anticipated and I felt myself getting stuck a lot of the time. I admit that I feel that I let my challenge for myself of creating my own application overtake the realistic goal of aiding in the research and redesign of an existing app. I now realize after discussing my presentation takeaways and what I would do with that feedback that my professors were correct in saying that I wasn’t digging as deep as I could. Something I would like to improve on in not always thinking that what I create has to be its own new thing. It is just as important, and sometimes even better, to look for an existing technology doing what I am focusing on that just needs a little more help. With that said, I totally agree that I could have redirected my project to focus on researching and redesigning the Alzheimer’s Daily Companion app. I am very proud of my final designs and feel that all of the design decisions have been backed up by my research. I also agree that I can now take those final designs and apply them to this app. Even though I did not do this, I am still incredibly proud of the app I was able to create. Yes it isn’t perfect and yes it needs some adjustments and probably even more backing but the fact that I was able to create it all on my own is very impressive to me. While I am not close to being the designer I would like to be, I know I am on the right track to getting there. This concludes my last UX documentation I will ever do in my undergrad career. It is very bittersweet but I am excited for what my future holds.
