Storing memories for Alzheimer’s patients — a UX case study
Memory Bank
The Buildup
Six million Americans today are living with Alzheimer’s disease. By the year 2050, the number is projected to rise to 14 million diagnosed. Chances are someone you know is experiencing this disease. Currently there is no cure in sight but, reading these facts it was clear something had to be done to support Alzheimer’s patients and their families. My team and I began studying this disease and found it’s a progressive condition where plaque buildup in the brain’s neurons destroys memory and mental function. This is a terrifying disease and determining how to save memories was our goal.
My team wanted to design a website that would be warm, welcoming and informational for patients and their families. Determining if our audience was the patient or the family members was our first task. To determine this, we used the design thinking process to empathize with the user in our research and design what the user needs.
Beginning Research
Researching Alzheimer’s disease was eye-opening and saddening. People are diagnosed and very quickly lose all brain function and personality while families tend to leave them behind. We wanted to empathize with the patients and the family members to realize what big issues were happening and where help needed to be implemented. My team and I started by creating an assumptions list which are common misconceptions about Alzheimer’s disease. This helped us to form questions we would ask potential users.
We wanted to interview professionals in this field, caregivers and people who have/had a relative diagnosed. I was able to meet with employees and residents at a senior living facility and ask them the questions we had formed.
From the interviews, I learned the Alzheimer’s patient was just as scared as the family members. These people are losing sight of themselves and forgetting who they are. We needed to find a way to engage the brain. Families are spending an extra $600-$1000 a month to support another person. This let us know why most Alzheimer’s patients are abandoned because some families cannot afford it.
I also found in our research, some families would give the diagnosed patients a puzzle to help engage them, but they were uninterested. We needed to make this website a family interaction where both parties could be involved instead of leaving a puzzle in front of a patient. Interviewing really gave us insight on what our user needs in this site.
Defining Our User
Our data gave us an understanding that our user would be a family member who takes care of their loved one at home. Our site would be a place where they would visit to help interact and store memories for their loved one with Alzheimer’s. This became our persona, a representative of all our data.
Tone:
- Sincere
- Caring
- Supportive
- Create awareness
What will the user be doing?
Brainstorming what the user needs, my team determined what features we needed. Our site would have articles and resources to help families understand Alzheimer’s. Additionally, the site would have activities that would engage the families to sit down with the diagnosed and play a game, make a puzzle, or paint to keep their brain active.
The main feature of the site would be a profile page that would represent the Alzheimer’s patient and be collaborative area for memories, photos and music. Other families members can sign on and add a message or photo to the profile. This would keep the users coming back each day to add to their journal or memories. This site would be a great compromise to many pain points families experience.
My team and I laid these features out to develop a story map to form understanding of the site within our team. This also gave me an understanding of how the user will flow through the site and get to one page to the other. We created this by writing the tasks the user would experience on the site on sticky notes. This allowed us to move them around on a surface and step back to see the bigger picture. Where would the user start, where would they go next and how would they get back.
My team and I had our user determined and calculated what they will be doing on the site. Now the fun part begins. We begin to create wireframes that are the rough layouts of where content will be on our site. We understood we would have a lot of pages to cover, so we split 4–5 pages between us. However, I explained wireframes would need to keep consistency so when we prototype them together there would be uniformity. This would be the structure that we would add color, fonts, photos and details to.
High-Fidelity
Home, Brain Training & Profile
Testing & Feedback
Building a prototype of the site was crucial to show the relationship of each page to each other. This goes back to our story map and if the user can find their way through the site. I was able to put the site in the hands of real users. I found every user was able to navigate through the site easily and the main header made sense to them. Some users were confused by the profile page and assumed the profile photo was of the family member logging on. Those same users did not understand the reason for a profile page. This is an issue I would fix in on-boarding to tell the user this is not your average Alzheimer’s site. Developing a new idea takes time for users to understand how to use, which is not always ideal, however this site would become a tool to bring families together and to promote brain function in Alzheimer’s patients.
In Conclusion
Our site provides a place to learn what the average Alzheimer’s brain is going through. Families need to change their mindset to accommodate an Alzheimer’s patient. This may be a big lifestyle change, but our site will help ease the stress and gives families a place to collaborate with each other. A unique feature we have above other sites is a place to add music and play it back to the Alzheimer’s patient. This is a remedy that all Alzheimer’s associations agree is proven to regain memories and stimulate brain connections. Our site provides a safe place to discuss, post and remember your loved one. These saved memories will be a digital journal that future generations can visit and remember their relative.
Going forward and with more time, I would like to put in place a shop where users could buy “purple” merchandise (Alz color). Users will be able to physically show their support while donating to Alzheimer’s research. I would also like to expand the user profile to incorporate a mood chart of the Alzheimer’s patient. This could help with their doctor when prescribing medication or simply tracking their behavior. Overall, I loved the user research and the testing. It really showed me the importance of finding out what the user needs over the designers personal needs in the site. I learned designing with a team can be conflicting, but promoting communication early will only be good for the team.
