5 Days at 5K

Nudge — A work experience project


Hi, I’m Harvey — a 16 year old, passionate designer from a small town in East Sussex. I started designing interfaces as a hobby back in early 2013. Since then, I’ve somehow figured out that you can make a career out of these pretty pictures. I came into contact with 5K through Twitter and at the time , conveniently, I was looking for work experience. I dropped them an email, asking if it was possible for a 5-day’s work experience and potential feedback on my portfolio. They kindly replied, giving me great, constructive feedback towards my portfolio — almost instantly. Also with this, they said I could come for the five days. Sure enough, I was really glad they said yes but quite frankly, I was more impressed that they could put up with a teen for the week. What I was hoping for at 5K’s studio, was to learn, receive feedback — (even the harsher variety from Matt!) and to work in a great atmosphere with great people. I had that exact experience plus more. Everyone made me feel welcome and always responded to any questions I had.

The design challenge


On the first day I arrived at the 5K studio, I took part in an internal workshop with the design team to identify my challenge for the week.

We took our lead from a BBC news article — published on the Monday — about the lack of support and care for people with dementia in the UK. It described that patients are having to rely disproportionately on family, friends and carers due to underfunding and lack of available services at a local level. Many doctors warned that they would be less likely to push for making firm, early diagnosis of dementia because the support wasn’t available to deal with the required level of care afterwards.

We decided to try to think of how a digital service could help people with early-stage dementia or memory loss to live independently for longer, potentially freeing up medical resources for improved care for more severe cases. Wearable technology — such as Apple Watch — now carry a wealth of sensors (as well as an unobtrusive, notification/message based interaction pattern) that when combined with a mobile/web app and low energy Bluetooth sensors, could provide a reassuring real-time connection to the patient’s family or carers.

Together with the 5K design team I looked at some examples of ’Internet of Things’ or home automation products, such as ‘Mother’ by Sen.se — and how we could potentially use embeddable sensors to log and report back medicine usage and location/activity to the web-app for carers or family members to view online. The aim of the service would be to allow the patient to feel they are keeping their independence and dignity for as long as possible — but also providing the peace of mind that a real-time connection and feedback mechanism can give those looking after them.

Specific use-cases could include:


  • Helpful reminders to take medication and activity monitoring — all logged and reported back to the web-app for the carer to view on a timeline.
  • Location tracking — leaving the house would trigger a display of information showing where they live, with contact and medical details available.
  • Detecting an decrease/increase in heart rate, or detecting a fall using the accelerometer. Activating an emergency call or notification.
  • Group messaging for family members, friends, carers or neighbours.
  • Very simple one-way ‘Yes/No’ push message functionality for the family to quickly check in and keep in contact.
  • Medication diary — updated in realtime — as well as alerts to the family or carer if medication is being missed.
  • General knowledge, medical information and support about dementia and its effects available to the carers.
  • Ability to make voice calls through to the patients smartwatch.

Example User Journey creation


To help decide which screens to visualise, we put together a very simple user journey, through a slice of functionality — I then used this to help illustrate a section of functionality:

After working on the user journey I started getting some quick sketches down on paper to look at how the service might work across multiple devices with multiple users. This helped me get an idea of the layout and flow between screens before jumping into visuals.

David wakes up in the morning, his Nudge smartwatch app reminding him to take medication before breakfast. This is logged via a sensor on his medication talking to his smart watch, which is then posted onto the timeline and medication diary for his family to view.

His daughter Jessica is sent a notification or email, taking her into the Nudge web-app dashboard view — here she can see details of David’s activity and medication. She navigates to the family chat area and informs her brother that she’ll be traveling for a few hours and can he keep a check on things in her absence. Her brother responds back saying he will.

Later on in the day David leaves the house to go down to the shop. On leaving the house, his smartwatch switches in to mobile information mode, showing him a reminder of his family’s contact details if he gets lost or needs help whilst he is out. Upon returning back to his house, the watch detects a higher heart rate and posts an alert to the family members. This is picked up by the brother — he activates a voice call through to the smart watch to check that everything is ok. David responds saying he’s fine, but a bit out of breath because he walked to the shop.

This is the dashboard view of the Nudge app where the family and carers can view an activity timeline and medical diary (updated from the smart watch app). The family members can talk to each other using the group chat section — as well as being able to send short messages and initiate voice calls through to their parent.

Summary on my 5 days at 5K


Not only have I learnt about design itself, I have also picked up great knowledge from everyone here at 5K about the thought process behind the design you are creating. On top of this, I have learnt a lot more about how a user would interpret the thing you are making. This was the most useful thing in my opinion because it gets you into different mindsets when creating. Not just being the creator but actually becoming the user as well. Overall, there isn’t much more to say other than I loved my time here at 5K. Everyone made me feel welcome and always responded to any questions I had. Even if any processes were time consuming, they somehow managed to constantly give me feedback. Matt, James, Chris, Rita — everyone was just amazing. For that all I can say is thank you so much.