Empowering caregivers during moments of crises
Creating a new way to relay information when activating personal emergency response systems
Concept Project
14 Days
The short version
Bay Alarm Medical is a Personal Emergency Response System (PERS) company that wants to make greater life-saving impact by adding a digital component to extend and enhance their existing products. They’d like to help their current subscribers send alerts and other useful information to family members of those subscribers and any needed emergency services. Our solution is to notify the care circle and display information via a webpage. The information includes: the current status of the patient, location, ability to call the patient directly along with others in the care circle and include the patients medical health information. This was all based on research and usability tests that found that those who receive a text of an emergency want to feel as empowered as possible with the ability to call to action.
See the journey below or
The Problem Statement
Bay Alarm Medical is a Personal Emergency Response System (PERS) company that wants to make greater life-saving impact by adding a digital component to extend and enhance their existing products. They’d like to help their current subscribers send alerts and other useful information to family members of those subscribers and any needed emergency services.
Tools & Methods
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Quantitative & Qualitative Research
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Competitive & Comparative Analysis
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Survey with Survey Monkey
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Empathy, Affinity & Survey Mapping
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Archetypes
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User flows for current design
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Wire framing
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User flow using new design
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Prototyping & Usability Testing with Invision
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UI & Visual Design
Beginning our journey
“I’ve got bubble gum, a paper clip and a rubber ducky magnet - Macgyvering a solution”
We had to first find our footing and figure out a place to begin our research it began to feel a bit like we landed in the middle of the desert without a map. We implemented an empathy map, interviews and a survey that culminated in an affinity map.
Finding trends
The information we got was incredibly useful and insightful for a better understanding of what care givers feel when taking care of a patient or someone they love.
The key bullet points we found
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Afraid and concerned if the device will work as intended.
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Confused about what will occur in the event of an emergency.
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Guilt for trying to have some semblance of their (care circles) own lives
Creating our archetype
“Pretty sure that’s north...or is it south?”
Taking what we’ve learned from compiling everything together into an affinity map, we were able to forge ourselves a tool to guide us the rest of the way through our project. In essence these will be our compass for the rest of the design sprint.
The Planner
Motivation:
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Fearful that they can’t take action in the event of an emergency.
Behavior:
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Asking someone nearby to check up on them. Aims to be as prepared as possible.
Goals & Needs:
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Needs to know what’s going to happen during an emergency. Needs to be able to feel that he/she can control the situation.
The Worrier
Motivation:
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Feelings of guilt for not being with the loved one 24/7.
Behavior:
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Calls or texts as much as they can to check up with them.
Goals & Needs:
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Wants to know they’re feeling ok.
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Wants to alleviate some of their responsibilities when caring for their loved ones.
The Independent
Motivation:
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Wants independence to live as they would like.
Behavior:
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Take their needs and well being in to their own hands.
Goals & Needs:
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Needs to continue their/normal lifestyle.
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Aims to satisfy the care circle by using the system, but may not actively use it.
Isolating our scope
"I've heard of a fork in the road, but this is just uncanny"
At this point we started brainstorming some ideas on how to approach a solution that would cater to all three archetypes. What we came up with was an app thats two sides of the same coin. One being a wellness app for the patient that would then enable the care circle to check up on them and their activity.
However it became apparent that this was too big for an MVP. So we took a hatchet and split it down the middle to focus on just the The Planner persona.
The current user flow
“Those are a lot of rocks in the river...and alligators, lots of alligators.”
We created a user flow of what our archetype would do in the current system so that we would see which areas of the process we should address first.
The Planners User
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This user flow matches some of the concerns and feedback we received during the interviews. They aren’t notified until much later in the process. A process that makes the care circle feel as though they aren’t in the know during a possible emergency situation.
The Hypothesis
By enabling the care circle to check in with the loved one and providing them with up to date information during the event the PERS device is activated. Then they are more likely to continue Bay Alarm Medical’s service due to an increase in the confidence that the services are working
Concept development
"A canoe, or skiff, or maybe a yacht?"
As we continue along and focus on just one archetype we had to figure out if we’re going to create a full fledged app that would eventually allow us to build future features to address the goals of the independent and the worrier or a text link that would send them to a site.
What we decided to do was create a mobile website.
We did this for a few reasons:
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Apps are expensive and this will save them time and money.
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In the context of providing them information about a current status, a mobile application isn’t needed.
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They want to be able to see what’s happening immediately and a link that eventually expires once the situation has been resolved is a lot simpler.
Our first attempt - v1.0
"We just need a boat"
We began to sketch out multiple ideas, and one that we felt confident about was something similar to our initial ideas for a check in app. In this instance it's a text message notification that directs them to the mobile site and gives the care circle as much information as possible in the situation that their patient or care receiver activates their personal emergency response system.
The Ideas:
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Gives the current location of the loved one. As our initial research showed people wanted to know where the person is currently located
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Expandable/slide up box that reveals more information
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Give information on the current status of the emergency as well as its progress
Low-fi wireframes.
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Usability Testing
"Well at least it floats"
With anything, our next step was to have users test out the product and boy did we test it. We found 7 users to test it out and the following were our findings.
The Key Takeaways:
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Extension tab isn’t intuitive. The user had no idea they could access it for more information.
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The map took up a lot of real estate.
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Wanted to be able to do take action and unable to so they “felt powerless and paralyzed” and caused more stress.
Our first second third attempt - v1.0-v1.2
"Maybe I spoke too soon"
While we did get some positive feedback during the usability testing, it was apparent there was some work to be done. You can see the evolution of them below and the changes implemented after a few usability tests. Each version was a step on making everything as clear as possible.
V1.0
Original.
V1.1
Attempted to make the slide box as well as the current progress more clear with the addition of an arrow and a line.
V1.2
Re-arranged the flow of information, placing grayed out statuses at the very bottom. Added a clear indicator of who's location was displayed on the map.
The Redesign, V1.3
"Let's design some duct tape"
It was clear that separating out the information wasn't working, but we were on the right path and we had elements of a good system, but we needed to go back to the drawing board and redesign it all on to one page.
So we took what we had, placed everything on one page, and included actionable items so that people don't feel so helpless when receiving a status alert.
preliminary sketches
V1.3
The Solution v1.4
"10 Fingers and 15 leaks later"
The thought process for this is that when the PERS is activated the care circle (the caregivers) who’ve been placed as emergency contacts for the care of the loved one will receive a text message notifying them of a possible emergency situation. During our usability tests on previous iterations we found that simply providing them with more information wasn't enough and sometimes even caused more stress unless they were able to perform some kind of action.
The solution hits the following points:
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Immediate response when PERS are pressed.
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Progress updates on the situation with what Bay Alarm Medical.
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Last location of the care receiver as some PERS devices have a gps. This will help in locating their whereabouts post emergency and which hospital they maybe at.
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Ability to call the care receiver or anyone from the emergency contacts directly from the mobile webpage.
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Access to the medical ID for the care receiver in case they are unable to convey that information or don't have it on hand.
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In able the care givers to call Bay Alarm Medical directly with any questions.
Final Thoughts
I believe this concept project has taught me a lot in the short amount of time I worked on it. With it being a blue skies project, I learned that you shouldn't aim at building the whole house or in this case product right away. That with the proper research you can create a solid foundation for a product that can later be expanded upon incrementally over a period of time. That was my biggest grappling with this project and one I think I was able to overcome after a bit of time as shown by splitting the initial idea in two and just focusing on a portion of it.
Given more time:
If I had more time to work on the project, I would have liked to have tested the design on if it made users anxious when using the app or how intuitive it is under duress. When a person is under duress they may not always be thinking completely clearly and so the copy-write has to be very linear and the steps intuitive. I would also like to test the legibility and how quickly people can absorb information in under a couple of minutes.