TakeCare
A mobile app that helps unpaid caregivers and high functioning patients manage and organize at-home care.
More than one in five Americans (21.3 %) are caregivers and have provided care to an adult or child with special needs at some time in the past 12 months.
When a well intentioned person asks a primary caregiver, “how can I help?” they may not have that information organized or ready to go. Caregivers and high functioning patients need a centralized place to organize at-home care.
I set out to create a mobile app that helps unpaid caregivers and high functioning patients manage and organize at-home care. The app is designed to give caretakers and individuals who need assistance need a centralized place to organize schedules, tasks, and utilize teams to help practically care for themselves, adult family members, or friends.
This product is a fabricated project completed as a part of DesignLab's UX Academy.
My Role
UX/UI Designer
Timeline
80-90 hours
Tools Used
Figma
Photoshop
Illustrator
Optimal Workshop
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on unpaid caregivers. According to a study by AARP, nearly half of all unpaid caregivers have reported feeling more isolated and lonely since the pandemic began, and more than one-third have reported feeling more anxious or depressed.
The competitive analysis researched showed that the common feature of these caretaking apps were the shared calendars and post an update sections. These are team-centered digital product and the research helped me to focus my design on team tasks and communication.
CaringBridge is a free online tool for sharing health updates.
Pros
Group planner/ calendar
Ways to help section
Journal, updates, and posts about the person
Cons
Text heavy
Multiple CTAs on one page
Hard to find other profiles
CircleOf is a free app designed with and for unpaid caregivers to help families and friends manage the care of a loved one.
Pros
Group planner/ calendar
Team-centered
Timeline for posts and updates
Cons
Only an app with no website option.
Lotsa Helping Hands is a central place to coordinate meals and help for friends and family.
Pros
Group planner/ calendar
Announcements and updates
Community support
Cons
Focuses mainly on meals, but still offers other types of coordination.
The affinity mapping process showed the following themes among research participants:
Mental well being
There was consistent and nuanced concern over the mental and emotional well being of both caretakers and the patients who they were caring for.
Physical Help
There were practical concerns, such as bathing, administering medication, and household chores that were mentioned by each of the research participants.
Tasks & Organization
A way to organize or create a communal calendar was something that was mentioned, or how to assign tasks to different people.
Community and Additional Resources
There was an air of “we don’t know what we don’t know yet” about how to care for a loved one or themselves and a need for community support and access to additional resources.
Based on user interviews, I created three personas: Olivia Carson, 32 year old high functioning patient who was paralyzed from the waist down and needs ongoing care, Betty Janik, a 65 year old retired woman who is the primary caregiver for her husband who has dementia, and Lucas White, a 55 year old man with a busy schedule and is the friend of a person who needs at home care
Based on my research insights and persona, I began to categorize and structure the information on what was most useful, usable, and user-friendly.
A sitemap was created in order to visualize the layout and content of the site.
I identified the two major paths users could take to add members to their care team.
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In order to understand how different types of users will complete specific tasks, I created the following task flows using the key below:
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I started my wireframe process by hand-drawing sketches as a way to explore different components, layouts, and flows in a more focused way.
While building out my wireframes, I looked at several different caregiving applications. For the care team building and communication experience, I looked at CircleOf and LotsaHelping Hands for design patterns that current caregivers might be acquainted with. I noticed CircleOf had an onboarding quiz to provide a curated profile and guide the user in how they might interact with the app. However, the quiz seemed too clinical and I thought it could use more personalization.
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In addition to the main features, I wanted to include the ability for users to create shared calendars and request specific team members to volunteer for tasks. Through this ability, users could see, suggest, and volunteer to help the caregiver or high functioning patient support.
For this design, I focused on the keywords from my mood board: care, connection, dignity, teamwork, and support. I chose to incorporate different pieces that looked like they depended on one another, or were a group working together. My goal was for it to look like many parts to a whole, huddled around a central figure. The idea of a team was central in the creation of these digitized iterations.
I wanted a color palette that was calming, soothing, and inviting. The typography reflects a softness, stability, and consistency that I wanted to emulate in the styling of this product.
I created a guide for how different buttons should appear in different states. Before starting my UI kit, did a thorough scan through my wireframes and listed every UI component in the app to ensure that I was creating a comprehensive kit.
I conducted 6 usability tests with caretakers to test the prototype. My goals and objectives were:
User completes each task with relative ease and no significant errors.
User completes each task in a reasonable time frame.
User is able to navigate from one task flow to the next.
Metric 1: 100% success rate
Metric 2: 100% success rate
Metric 3: 100% success rate
Metric 1: 100% success rate
Metric 2: 100% success rate
Metric 3: 100% success rate
Metric 1: 100% success rate
Metric 2: 100% success rate
Metric 3: 100% success rate
Of users pushed the “Team” button on the navigation bar instead of the “View Team” button at the top to access the team.
Of users were confused by whether or not the "more info" link was actually a link.
Of users had difficulty with the font and button sizes.
Of users were not sure how to interact with the selection buttons.
This project allowed me to learn about designing for different user’s needs simultaneously. I learned how to use research to inform my design decisions and experience how design is not a linear process.
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I was able to work with my mentor and other design professionals to better understand realistic design capabilities for healthcare applications and best practices in app design. This project helped to teach me how to solve complex problems for applications by not only understanding and designing for the user but also making sure that the business goals just as important. I also learned how to manage expectations and that constant communication and realigning are the key to a successful project.
This hypothetical caregiving teams app was built with the goal to bring and retain as many users users through connecting them to each other in a central digital location. If this application was carried out in real life, I would gauge success on the net new traffic brought in and user engagement. Based on new data, analytical information, and user testing I would make design improvements accordingly and continue to develop features that are useful to caregivers and meet their ever evolving needs.