The Fork in the Road
Our team dedicated this week to the review and refinement of our idea and concept. In order to do so, we pursued market research, analyzing our competitive environment and conducting personal interviews, along with technical research regarding the functions, possibilities, and limitations of coding an apple watch application. We actively e-mailed various entities to learn from, such as researchers, personally affected individuals, professors, and Med-Tech companies in the area to schedule meetings.
One interview that was particularly fruitful was an interview conducted with Phyllis Fehr on Monday morning. Phyllis is currently affected by early onset Alzheimer’s disease, and is an active member of Ontario’s Dementia Advisory Group. We had prepared a list of questions to initiate the dialogue, which provided us with valuable insight into our target market’s perspective. Phyllis shared about her views on the current market offerings, the current condition of existing practices in treatment, her personal experience, and on the potential of our idea, which really made us put the core of our initial vision back in question.
Disproving Assumptions
She inferred many of our assumptions regarding our target market, and gave us valuable feedback about our initial interface idea. Firstly, we learned that the variability of symptoms is an important complexity to take into account when trying to provide a general solution that fulfills each Alzheimer’s patient’s individual needs. Moreover, she shared that her biggest concerns did not revolve around her, as she knows and accepts her condition as a victim of dementia, but more around her close ones who care about her.
In regards to the existing solutions, she emphasized the fact that there was already an extensive list of applications and devices on the tech market that currently solve the grand majority of specific problems targeted to all groups that are concerned in treating an Alzheimer’s patient. She currently does not see any need for a new technological solution that would bring much value to her treatment. That being said, she also said that no solution was yet advocated by the Alzheimer’s society as the ultimate solution that consolidates all aspects of the issue, possibly due to the variability and complexity of the diagnosis and symptoms.
An Intuitive Medium
We also questioned her about the potential of using the apple watch as the medium to deliver our service, and she brought up many valuable points. Firstly, she brought up the fact that the apple watch may not target the right market, as individuals who suffer from dementia are often old, inapt to learn due to their cognitive limitations, have difficulty reading small screens, and move away from the tech-savvy generation. Moreover, most have a very limited fixed income that would not cover such an expense. There are also complications regarding monitoring tremors, as tremors may be isolated in a part of the body that is not reachable by the watch. On the other hand, patients are often very sensitive to marginalization, which could potentially make them attracted to a wearable device that operates in the back-end and looks fairly normal. One key point was that these individuals do not want to move away from what they already know. Therefore, the medium would have to be a very intuitive interface, that requires very little to no consumer learning, and that can be incorporated into an item or aspect of their routine.