Enriching Elder Care
Mobile app design
Problem
Many elderly people suffer from progressive memory disorders, such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Most elderly folks want to remain independent, but as time goes by, these disorders begin to interfere with daily life. When multiple family members and friends are caring for an elderly loved one, the logistics are hard enough. But it’s even tougher for a single caregiver to understand their loved one’s overall condition, and decide when full-time care should be considered. Current tools and techniques for assessing memory health can be time- and cost-intensive for families and doctors alike.
Solution
But what if you could just have a conversation? New analysis techniques can detect and track memory disorders just by listening to speech. So, my team and I designed an app to facilitate conversation between elderly people and their informal caretakers. Friends and family members can deepen their relationships with their elderly loved one while recording stories and gaining a clearer picture of his or her memory health.
Process
My team started this project with two personas, Rosario and Hector. They care for Inez, Rosario’s mother, who still lives alone. We were prompted to design a mobile app which would help Rosario and Hector communicate about Inez, without being a burden.
We kicked off our own research with an “ecosystem exploration” worksheet, to help us understand the holes in our knowledge. Next, we conducted a few quick interviews with family members who are caring for their parents. Key insights:
It’s difficult to keep track of a loved one’s mental health over time, especially if you don’t see him/her every day
Families want to move their loved ones into full-time care before accidents and injuries occur
Caretakers want their loved ones to feel independent and involved
Losing memories means losing precious stories and family history
We used these insights and our personas to brainstorm some narratives. How could mobile technology fill some of these needs? We started thinking of ways that a mobile app could connect Rosario and Hector as they visit Inez and discuss her long-term mental health trends.
Along the way, we discovered a fledgling memory-health analysis technique known as “conversational analysis.” Speech patterns, cadence, and repetition in a recording can be analyzed to gauge the progression of a loved one’s memory disorder (source). We believe that advances in machine learning will allow this technique to be automated, so we worked this technology into our brainstorming and made storyboards to convey the most promising solution.
Inspired by StoryCorps, we decided to use storytelling and other meaningful conversations to capture speech for analysis. The caregivers can arrange these recordings (and other details) into story streams, which are precious and valuable to the entire family.
We created several wireframe and prototype iterations using the Material Design guidelines. As we iterated, we removed excess features that didn’t strengthen the core idea.
I also created simple animations for the analysis loading time and Rosario’s “new story” notification (shown below). A click-through prototype of our final app proposal is live on InVision.
Carnegie Mellon University MHCI
Course: Interaction Design Studio, Fall 2016
Instructors: Karen Berntsen and Shelley Moertel
Teammates: Pei Lin and Katie Williams
