Collaborative project with Baycrest Hospital | Showcased at DesignTO & Legislative Assembly Showcase
Cue helps people living with Alzheimer’s in accomplishing their daily routines, while relieving stress from care providers. Through our real-time monitoring platform, we aim to maximize quality of life by facilitating effective care.
Date 2019
Figma, Adobe XD, Illustrator, Photoshop
Role
Project Lead
Design Research
UX/UI Design
Graphic Design
Mainly contributed in UX and UI, prototyping, and research.
• • •
"Our mission is to build effective communication
so that together we can create a compassionate community."
Project Overview
A 4-month Collaborative project with Baycrest Hospital, designing an innovating assistive products for people living with dementia, their caregivers and families, each solution reflecting the individual abilities, needs and wants of clients and/or care providers at the hospital.
We explore investigative, user-first, ground-up ways to better design the solution, and consider how those approaches recognize and facilitate our personal, physical and mental diversity. We used design as a tool to rethink and reframe health less in terms of addressing medical deficits and more in terms of supporting cultural and social models of support, care, well-being and aging.
The Problem
Early Onset Alzheimer Patients often have issues in difficulty following multiple step instructions, experience increased frustration, losing their train of thought more often, and remembering daily routines and tasks that need to be achieved throughout the day.
Our stakeholders, Families and caregivers often get overwhelmed by trying to provide effective care while managing their own lives. Moreover, they face challenges with constructive communication and mutual understanding.
Around 50 million people worldwide have dementia.
Nearly 10 million new individuals are affected by it every year and struggle with daily routines.
Research
We conducted a multi-methodology research effort to better understand how it looks like living with dementia, how they wish to improve their quality of life, their daily routine, and how academic researchers have sought to explore these questions in their relative fields of study.
Ethnography / Observation at the hospital
Literature Review
Subject matter expertise feedback
Market Research
Value Proposition
" How might we increase a quality of communication between people with Alzheimer's (stages 1-5) and caregivers in their daily life, by providing a cueing product/tool to support, remind and encourage them to achieve essential daily tasks ? "
What makes Cue special ?
The companion system between the caregiver and the client’s app was not seen in any systems made in the marketplace. The app is accessible to other family members and they will be able to track the client’s condition at any given time throughout the day.
What makes our design unique is that we have adapted the use of icons in the process of cueing, providing visual cues that gives clients a better understanding method. Our system allows real-time monitoring, allowing caregivers to track and add tasks even when they’re not physically with the client.
We find that practicing routines is very beneficial to people living with dementia and help them in building good habits.
Iterations
Our initial design was a physical product. We sketched and created many different prototypes in the beginning. We had a feedback session where we could get critical subject matter expert's feedback on our initial prototype. Then, we, again, had another feedback session with the second prototype. After going through a variety of iteration, research, and user journey, We landed on a cueing platform.
1st Subject Matter Experts' Feedback
- Too complicated over stimulating: show one task at a time
- Caregiver and client could use it together to avoid conflict
- Make it bigger and more clear
- Customized icons to suit user’s needs and lifestyle
- Incorporate more lights and sound to capture the client’s attention
- As the disease progresses the agenda would be less useful
2nd Subject Matter Experts' Feedback
- Switch task icons may increase task of caregivers
- If making analog clock, consider limiting to only 5 main task
- A bit bigger on tasks
- Think about next generation, what are the possibilities in 5-10 years
Initial Client's Interface
Initial Care Provider's Interface
User Journey
A scenario : Care giver outside, not with the client
Design
Initial wireframe and flow
UI Design
Careprovider Interface
Client Interface
Solution
We developed an app with both a client interface and a companion interface for the caregiver. The caregiver interface allows them to set a certain task via app and push a notification as a cue helping client to achieve the task. This is especially useful when the caregiver is not next to the client.
The client’s app is designed with a simple, distinguishable, and non-irritating interface that is easy to operate, increasing the perceivability of information for older generations. Thus, it is achieved through features such as icons and bright contrasting colours.
The app is accessible to other family members and they will be able to track the client’s condition at any given time throughout the day.
Final Prototype
Key Takeaways
Through out the 4 month journey, we learned about employing empathy and using user-centered design to develop a product. And very much enjoyed each process.
One area of success would be the dual apps that work together. What that could be improved would be to continue developing this app and expand it to be also used with wearable tech such as smart watches.
Challenges
As this is my and our team's first UX/UI project, we struggled in the beginning how we should approach the design process and the clients.
But the ambiguity brought up our persistency. As we do more research and build our ideas and prototypes, we were encouraged as a team and able to finish the project successfully .
Presented at Baycrest Hospital & 2019 DesignTO
Presented at 2020 Legislative Assembly Showcase