Week 6 (Oct 12–16) — Primary Research Cont. & Concept Brainstorming

Interviews Cont.

In our previous interviews, we were able to gather insights about recent experiences at healthcare facilities and the emotions felt before, during, and after appointments. We previously focused heavily on the waiting rooms and thought about potential interventions in that space. However, based on our results we found that there is a bigger picture issue of poor health literacy that is not limited to the waiting room space. We wondered if there were any connections between issues with health literacy and our previous research with emotional support and caregiver relationships. We were interested in exploring health literacy in older adults further so we adjusted our interview questions to focus more on how well participants understand doctors’ instructions and how they process information.

• “Doctors are knowledgeable and empathetic so they can explain medical conditions at a basic level, but I had to do a lot of research on my own to understand my cataracts.”
• “It is important for me to process my diagnosis in a method I understand. It was helpful to create my own drawing of the structure of an eye to educate myself.”
• “One thing that helped me understand my diagnosis better was through relating it to my personal experiences. For example, my mom also had cataracts so I had an idea of what to expect.”
• “I always feel nervous and anxious before my appointments. Vision is something that everyone is concerned about. I feel a sense of urgency to know what’s wrong with my vision so I can quickly get it fixed.”

When discussing health literacy with our participants, it was interesting to see how much of an emotional impact it has on older adults. When people age, there is an increased concern about health and sometimes issues like vision loss can happen instantaneously and affect the way older adults live their lives and rely on others. The sudden loss of one’s capabilities can cause an intense emotional toll and affect how older adults understand and feel in control of their health.

Participatory Probe Cont.

This week, we also continued gathering insights from our participatory design probe. We were able to meet remotely with two older adult participants who both have recently experienced eye surgeries/appointments. The most compelling insights from these two participants surrounded the concepts of growing older and evolving family relationships. We were able to get a better understanding of the emotions associated with growing older and how that affects their sense of independence.

• “Family relationships are balancing rocks. You start off as the big rock at the bottom that is the decision maker. As you age it’s like taking that rock and putting it at the top and your kids become the decision makers. You start to lose control and your decisions aren’t taken as seriously.”
• “Family relationships are repelling magnets. My kids don’t always love my opinions. They want me to ask people to do things for me when I’d rather be independent.”

After completing the activity with two participants, it was surprising to see the different emotional responses it elicited. We intended for this activity to be somewhat playful and gamified. However, we realized that for some participants the conversation of aging is quite scary and nerve wracking. After our 4th participant, we noticed the fear of aging was mainly coming from how their body and mind continue to function. Ultimately the insights from the activity highlighted the complexity of emotions associated with aging and allowed us to see how these emotions are related to health. For instance, the idea of role reversals in family dynamics can be limiting to older adults who value independent decision making surrounding their health needs. Older adults may feel like their opinions are not taken as seriously because of their age and that important decisions are being made for them.

Synthesizing Research

After we did our participatory design research, we organized the main points we noticed from each interview, mainly around the topic of aging. It was interesting to see how these participants had commonalities and some of the categories we came up with were family relationships, independence, and hobbies.

Some of the main points include:

• Older adults value independence and want to be in control of their health
• Most older adults would prefer to hire caregivers if they had to, rather than ask their family members
• Almost everyone feels anxious in waiting rooms and during appointments
• Some visual impairments require many appointments/checkups over years before they can be treated (cataracts)
• There’s a lot of informational resources for visual impairments at care centers, but there doesn’t seem to be much take-home material

Persona

We created a persona for our target user, drawing a lot from our interviews. Our persona is Veronica, a 62-year-old woman who’s just been diagnosed with cataracts. She is anxious because she knows she’ll have to have many recurring appointments over many years before she can get cataract surgery (cataracts must progress to a certain stage before they can be treated). She doesn’t feel prepared or like she fully understands what she needs to do to prepare for the entire process, but she’s also very independent, so she wants a resource that she can use to digest the information, as well as organize her schedule and be aware of appointments ahead of time.

Top 5 Activity

After synthesizing our research and creating a persona, we were still somewhat lost in what type of concepts we wanted to create. So we decided to do the Top 5 Activity by IDEO (shared with us by Kristin). Each one of us came up with 5 different types of concepts and what topics we wanted to address. After we individually came up with 5 ideas, we came together and looked for common points we were interested in. The 6 topics we found common in all our ideas were personal patient material, easing anxiety, accessible health literacy / educational material, independence, verbalizing emotions / needs, and fun ways to grow relationships. Out of the 6, we were most interested by health literacy, anxiety that comes with appointments, and personal patient material. From those 3 topics, we thought about patient material and documents that can be taken back and forth from appointments to their homes. After talking presenting our research and concepts to the professors, we realized that we might have been too ambitious; therefore, we are going to reduce our “how might we…” ideas.

Concept Pitch

For our concept brainstorming, we want to create an accessible booklet. The reasons behind our choice are based off of:

• Inspiration from cataract surgery patients, who need routine appointments over many years
• Giving patients independence to schedule health needs around their daily tasks / activities
• Addressing digital gap for older adults
• Making sure patients understand their health needs
• Reducing anxiety by ensuring they are prepared for their appointments

From our reasons ‘why,’ we narrowed down what we wanted to include in this booklet by 5 parts:

• Space for notes / questions — for upcoming appointments (write notes and questions before appointments so patients can have them available beforehand and won’t forget the things they want to address) [addressing the anxiety]
• Calendar — when next appointments will happen / when to take medicine [patient material]
• Tracking vision journey — to document their emotions, their progress, and their appointment notes. [addressing the anxiety and the patient material]
• Diagnosis information — doctor’s diagnosis in language that is understandable to the patient [health literacy]
• Reminders — to help patients to remember to bring the booklet to appointments

Some visual references

We also wanted to explore the tactile elements that could be implemented onto the booklet. We were interested in using tabs and tactile typography to organize information better and also make the booklet experience to be heightened and understandable.