The Process
Research
To start, we conducted 6 semi-structured interviews with older adults (age 80 - 90.) Separately, we interviewed family members who identified as full-time or part-time caretakers for them.
A common theme that was important to both groups was maintaining strong family bonds and relationships. A unique theme that caught our attention was the importance of organizing care and scheduling meaningful activities.
We dove deeper into these subjects with a literature review of research papers (namely, the following topics: Exploring Factors Influencing Caregiver Burden, Activity Scheduling for Older Adults, Conceptualizing How Caregiving Relationships Connect to Quality of Family Caregiving, Quality of the Caregiver-Care Recipient Relationship, Association Between Caregiver Strain and Self-Care, and Dying, Death, and the Afterlife in Human-Computer Interaction.)
Ideate
To turn our findings into opportunities for solutions, we came up with "how might we"s.
We honed in on the importance of organizing care and scheduling meaningful activities as the root cause of many issues, and wondered how solving for this problem might strengthen family relationships and quality of life for both older adults and their family caregivers.
We asked questions like: How might we plan a meaningful day? How might we keep track of what makes someone's day meaningful? How might we establish a care team for someone?
Iterate
The first screen we designed for our solution was a simple way to keep track of someone's preferences, including their favorite activities, meals, and entertainment. This page became the heart of our design; we went on to create an app to help family caretakers make their loved ones' (older adults) days special.
We also focused on organizational tools like a shared calendar, to do list, and care chat, to help family members stay on the same page and form a care team.
We transitioned the design from a paper prototype to a Figma prototype, bringing our solution to life. If I could work on this project again, one thing I would do differently is spend more time iterating on the visual design to make the app more warm, bright, personable, and overall visually pleasing.
