Caregivers of people living with dementia (PLWD) have to track a lot of health information including: appointments, medications and corresponding dosages, progression of the dementia or Alzheimer's disease. Caregivers want access to in-depth information on available support in an easy and efficient way. Because of their role, caregivers tend to feel isolated or unsupported, and it is difficult to find people to talk to. Care partners must always be attentive to their partner's needs, and often forget about their own needs.
The Amelia mobile app is connected to a smart speaker, and therefore the app must be designed with voice interactions in mind. The app must also take a lot of information from the user, and present it to the caregiver in a clear and concise way to assist them in their day to day responsibilities.
The Benten Technologies team provided us with their findings from initial user interviews. Caregivers were interviewed about their experiences living with and caring for people living with Alzheimer's disease and dementia. Additionally, Alzheimer’s disease experts were interviewed as well to provide clinical insight.
Caregivers were asked to complete a "Needs Assessment Survey" to help the team discover the needs and priorities of each caregiver. We then organized findings into a simple matrix to help determine which features and concepts we would focus on moving forward.
Based on surveys and interviews, we developed two main personas. Both personas are primary caregivers, but each persona has a different relationship to their care receiver.
We felt our product was truly unique - there is nothing on the market quite like it. So we decided to draw inspiration from different applications that excelled at producing the following features: mental health tracking, positive mood orienting, medication tracking, handling difficult PLWD behaviors, and social community engagement.
After synthesizing research findings, we conducted multiple brainstorm sessions to begin conceptualizing solutions for the most critical needs of the caregivers. Each team member did individual brainstorming first, and then we used Figjam to collaboratively record our ideas and discuss.
We grouped and sorted our ideas using Affinity Mapping. As a team, we took votes on which ideas were the best to focus on moving forward, and then created and voted on user stories that would become the basis for our user flows.
We solidified the following five user stories as a team:
As a user, I want to...
Once the user stories were solidified, we mapped out critical user flows for the application. Since the project revolved around voice interactions, we also created critical flows that incorporated voice inputs.
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Each member of the team sketched out potential designs for critical flows and features to explore in the design phase. This phase was critical because it allowed us to get onto the same page as our stakeholders as to what was expected. At first, there was some miscommunication about whether the product was to be a standalone speaker/physical product in the caregiver’s home versus a mobile-first product. Ultimately we went through various iterations of sketching, and ended up with mobile application focused flows. See a few of my mobile-first sketched flows below.
Amelia is meant to be a companion to everyone. The design should be simple and clean, to help reduce cognitive load for the user. All communication should be easy to follow in order to reduce complexity of the topics involved. The Amelia app design should balance a professional and clinical feel that establishes trust with the user, with a lighthearted and encouraging tone. Since the application will be used by older generations, it is crucial to use color and imagery intentionally to assist in simplifying app interactions.
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We created some higher fidelity screens and flows to get feedback from potential users. This allowed us to quickly gain insight about the feel of the app, the proposed interactions, and ultimately how this app could successfully be integrated into daily life.
Over the course of testing, we conducted interviews with four caregivers and one Alzheimer's disease expert. Interviews and user testing were conducted remotely via Zoom, and sessions ran for approximately 45 minutes.
Key Takeaways:
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Moving forward, there needs to be full development of support resources and interactions. The Support section of the application needs to be researched and designed to include the content that will be most useful for users. A chat function should also be created for users to get immediate answers to vital questions about care.
The Amelia calendar and reminders should integrate with existing products, such as Google or Apple calendar. The app should make it easy to import events from other calendar applications.