Challenge

To create a mobile application that helps caregivers manage patients’ health, inspired by my grandma’s experience with ALS. In order to design a solution, I conducted user research to identify the user group and the user problems.

Research Methodology

​To create a mobile application that helps caregivers manage patients’ health, inspired by my grandma’s experience with ALS. In order to design a solution, I conducted user research to identify the user group and the user problems.

Surveys

• 21 interviewees cared for a patient in the last three years.

• Most of the patients were 65 years old or older, and the caregivers' age ranged between 18 to 65 years old.

• Most of the care was provided at the caregiver's or patient's home.

• Most users didn't consider themselves as primary caregivers because 92.3% of them had additional help.

• Most users slept 3 to 6 hours a day, which may be due to 58.4% of the respondents being full-time employees or students.

Interview

• Mental stress is one of the biggest pain points.

• One of the most interesting things is that some used menstrual cycle applications to help track patients' symptoms, medical intakes, etc.

• People created chat groups to keep family members updated on the patient's condition.

Competitive and Heuristic Analysis

There weren't a lot of healthcare applications that were widely available, and meditation applications were popular at the time. Mental stress was also one of the problems the users were facing. I included meditation applications in this analysis to see what was available and the type of features that were offered.

Key Findings

• Mental stress is the biggest pain point when users do not have an outlet

• Users had additional cycle trackers and messaging applications to manage their patients

• Healthcare applications are visually unappealing and data-intensive making the onboarding process extremely long.

• Several care applications restricted user control of making their symptoms

Problem Revised

Users need an outlet to destress and to help manage patients’ information.

Personas and Empathy Maps

Job Stories

User Flow

Low fidelity prototype

Early phase of design on how the onboarding process would look like

Feedback in the prototype

1. Users had trouble moving to the next screen as they could not find the "Next" button. Thus, the “Next” button was relocated to the end of the screen for a smoother conversational flow.
   

2. Terminologies were reworded to fit the users’ lingo (for example Panel → Home, and Symptoms → Health Data).
   

3. Arrows were added on Journal’s photo section to indicate users can swipe left and right to preview photos without going into each post.
   

4. Meditation and patient profiles’ landing pages were combined into one to avoid confusion.
   

5. Users did not notice the progress bar and felt the onboarding process was too long. As a result, I segmented the progress bar and coloured it orange so users have a better indication of how much left is to go. Additionally, the “Skip” button was added to help speed up the onboarding process.

Mid fidelity prototype

After prototyping and making adjustments.

Mid fidelity prototype

After prototyping and making adjustments.

Positive feedback

• Users liked the medication feature where they can track their patients' medical history.

• Users found the information a lot more organized and readily available compared to physical documents.

• Users like the overall design and colour choices as it gives the application a professional, trustworthy, and joyful look.

• Users like the dietary information for each medication.

Constructive feedback

• Users were not interested in meditation and cared more about patient management. They did not see a direct benefit in meditation as they did for patient management.

• Users did not like the amount of scrolling required in the onboarding process. They preferred cleaner and shorter screens.

• Users felt the onboarding process was still too long.

• Younger users liked the fact they can document an event with photos in the Journal section. Older users, however, preferred a traditional dairy format.

• Users were concerned about the application’s privacy and security in putting people’s personal information.

Conclusion

After conducting user testings, I realized people do not necessarily need an activity to help distress. Simply helping them manage information that is easy to access will help improve their experience. Overall, I felt more research and testing were required to find the right feature balance.

Re-thoughts

Onboarding flow

​Users felt the onboarding process was too long. Some users actually prefer to play around the application before they decide to use it.

• The goal is to show users the value of the app with the right amount of onboarding time.

• Break large groups of text into smaller sections.

• Break long screens into multiple shorter ones for a cleaner user interface.

• Possible alternative: Allow users to play with parts of the features without the onboarding process (tracking symptoms, logging journals, etc.). As users move on to a different feature like the patient information page, they are then asked if they like to set this up (with an estimated required time - This setup will need about 5 minutes).

Asterisk (*) for the required fields was not obvious enough.

• Outline the field in red so that it grabs users' attention and a call for action.

The photo capture auto-fill feature was a bit confusing to users when the same fields reappear on the next screen.

• When users choose to use capture auto-fill, ask customers to confirm if the filled fields are correct and have the filled field light greyed out to indicate no action is required.

Button design

None of the users commented about the buttons. However, I felt the buttons could have designed better (these buttons were my first UI asset using Sketch).

• Even spacing, better contrast, and overall a consistent button design.

Notifications ideas

A possible feature is sending users a reminder on when their medications are running low. This can help caregivers pick up medications or supplies in bulk for multiple patients.

• Give users the option to input the number of pills they have and set an alert when the pill is under a certain value.

• Send a reminder for when medications are running low.

Users wanted a reminder of the dietary restrictions when consuming their medical pill (e.g. no acidic food or drinks such as lemonade for 30 minutes).

• Before or after their pill intake, send a dietary alert to help the users avoid certain foods.

• Alert the users when certain medications conflict with each other and suggest a time period that works better.

• Have an indicator when a medication has already been taken and the remaining amount (e.g. I took 1 at 10 am and need 2 more to go).

Privacy and security challenge

Users were concerned with the privacy of their information.

• Setting a two-factor authentication (e.g. phone or text a security code) where users will need to enter a code before viewing personal information.

Organizations are reluctant to change

• I spoke to a Residential Services Coordinator (SL) at PLEA Community Services Society, who provides community services and support to children, youths, and families that are facing significant challenges. SL advised many companies especially, smaller organizations, required governmental approval before they can use certain software or systems. These approval processes can take from several weeks, months to years, which is one of the reasons why many organizations prefer doing things the old fashion way.