The CloudCare app is part of iVO (IoT inom vård och omsorg) national project is designed to facilitate caregiving for elderly people who reside at their own homes. This system will facilitate collaboration among caregivers, professionals and smart devices, and will be launched in September 2020.
CLOUDCARE
Mobile Design
Key Goal:
Addressing challenges of caregiving for Swedish elderly people residing at their own homes.
CLIENT
RESEARCH INSTITUDES OF SWEDEN (RISE)
ROLE
UX Researcher
UX/UI Designer
LOCATION
Stockholm
Caregiving for the old population who are living independently and assuring proper routines and a safe daily life for them is of major concern to their relatives as well as the healthcare system. The Scandinavian countries have invested considerably in this area in order to find functional and sustainable solutions by combining IoT-based technologies. The iVO project was conducted in collaboration with several Swedish municipalities. The CloudCare app is part of this project and is aimed at addressing the challenges of caregiving for this group of elderly people.
This system has not been planned to replace human resources, however, it is expected to facilitate the monitoring and coordination of caregivers/relatives for more effective caregiving.
OVERVIEW
The CloudCare app is an interactive system that monitors the daily routines of the careseekers through sensors installed at different home spaces and on home appliances, and sends useful and urgent information to their relatives/caregivers. Hence, the big challenge for an optimal functioning here is how to organise and categorise the information received from sensors into a structured interactive system that is compatible with the users’ needs and demands.
• The careseekers’ needs may change constantly over time depending on their mental and physical conditions. Hence, this system should be adaptable to their flow of life and their immediate needs.
• It is desired that the system contributes to providing a sustainable caring system by delivering high-quality care and improving public health without exhausting natural resources.
• This system is required to find an optimal solution for organising and maintaining the large amount of data received from sensors into structural and easy-to-understand output.
• A main feature of the system should be facilitated coordination among users.
CHALLENGES
I was involved in this project as a UX researcher and designer, working to build a clear picture of the elderly’s core needs and the caregivers’ expectations of the system. I carried out this task by reviewing scientific publications on new caring technologies. In the next step, I performed a competitor analysis on available caregiving systems to learn about how these systems work and about their common features and functionality. I also analysed the available client database to understand users’ concerns and demands. After that in order for gaining a deeper insight of the users’ experience I generated an empathy map based on three informal interviews I conducted through Skype with caregiving relatives of two aged adults suffering from dementia and arthritis. I also interviewed a doctor who has been working in an elderly healthcare centre for years.
My job as a UX designer was started by creating five personas in five scenarios which then led to building the information architecture and a user flow. At this level, I realised it was not quite clear what values to be considered in the making of the system so it represents a patient-centred product that is compatible with the careseeker’s needs over time and also helps users to stay aware of the latest developments in the conditions of their beloved ones with a good confidence. Hence, my role pushed me forward to think about the information structure of the app to be set freely by the relatives/caregivers depending on the careseeker’s health conditions.
MY ROLE
RESEARCH
• Users interviews
• Competitor analysis
• Reflection & Insights
• User flow analysis
• Presentation to the project manager
• Empathy map
UX Design
• Personas
• Scenarios
• Information Architecture
• User Flow
• Wireframes
• Presentation to the project manager
‘’Aged people, like the other age groups are different depending on their interests, motivations and health situation. we should not define them in one category ’’.
‘’This system can help siblings to improve their collaboration in caring the aged parents’’.
‘’Living independently will improve the elderly self-confidence’’
‘’It would be super helpful if an intelligent system can inform me whether my mom has eaten her food or has taken her medication on-time’’.
PERSONAS
• Due to health conditions of the elderly careseekers (suffering from mental or physical problems or both), the relative/caregiver needs specific services for keeping aware of the beloved one’s health conditions and confident about their secured situation. For instance, a person who is suffering from a mental complication like dementia will need extra services like GPS or door lock alarms and the user will therefore expect the system to provide relevant features to address those concerns.
• As the elderly careseeker’s health conditions can change over time, the information structure in the system should be easily customizable by users to provide appropriate support.
• Users of the app will need legal authority (e.g. careseeker’s consent) to access the whole or part of the information. Therefore, the system has to be able to determine relative/caregiver’s ranking by a secured method to control their accession to the information and services and to adjust to appropriate settings.
• Depending on cultural factors the users can decide on the level and frequency of notifications they want to receive from the system. In this perspective, the users will be divided into moderately notified and highly notified groups.
UNDERSTANDING THE USERS
The careseeker’s homepage is a place where the user can check regularly and figure out whether the careseeker’s situation is normal in terms of daily routines and schedules, or that something irregular has happened. The user can be made aware of the importance of irregularities by the different notification colours.
• A remarkable achievement of this system is to enable users to customize structure of the information at any moment based on new developments on the careseekers’ side and the updated needs for support and services. In other words, the information structure in the system is not hardcoded and can change frequently.
• The user and the healthcare system may refer to the timeline at historical dashboard and review changes in the careseeker’s situation over the course of time. Hence, they will be able to assess the trend based on the careseeker’s performance and analyse whether things are going well or a more intense/relaxed care is needed.
• The system sets up a community board (messaging system) to facilitate collaboration among relative/caregivers. Hence, it provides a platform to exchange views on the careseeker’s needs and situation and to see what other relative/caregivers think.
THE SOLUTIONS
A workshop led by the UX team of RISE was held for other participants of the iVO project. In this workshop RISE people presented the CloudCare app and then asked participants to rank content and usability of each page separately. The UX team received valuable feedback through this workshop which was helpful to further improve the system.
UX WORKSHOP
A few of the PARTICIPANTS’ INSIGHTS
• The users are enabled to determine the level of notifications they receive from the system. This functionality was adopted considering the notion that some users may choose to receive only high-level notifications, i.e. the more critical information, while others may want to have detailed information.
• Providing a good platform for communication among users has been regarded as a useful functionality of the system. The app is designed to harbour and encourage effective collaboration among relatives/caregivers.
• The optional Comfort Services could be crucial to some users because it can have a direct impact on the careseeker’s health conditions.
• The app needs to be multilingual due to the varied backgrounds of the users and to enhance functionality.
• By considering some security/privacy issues, the system should be able to determine the level of access to information for different users.
• The system will benefit from users’ feedback for improving features that may not have worked properly/optimally.
USABILITY TEST
LESSONS LEARNED
‘’I learned, If we create personas carefully, they will help us to design the flows and UI elements more effectively. Additionally, I understood specifying the accurate tone and voice for the system is essential for performing every UX project. ’’
‘’The content should be clear and transparent to avoid the users' misunderstandings, especially for complicated and multi-task systems. The role of UX writers is very important since they can guide the content to a better efficiency.’’
‘’I learned, what strategies should a UX designer take when working on an interactive system that is updated frequently by IoT and machine learning data.’’
‘’Sharing insights with developers and stakeholders is important for improving the process of design. It can help them to get familiar with our UX strategies, and also help us to receive useful feedback.‘’
‘’I learned, how to treat the qualitative research and how to turn it out into something meaningful, useful, and easy-to-understand for the project.’’
‘’Promotion of UX Culture in the company.’’
