CalmerCare – Capstone One UX Case Study
Overview
The number of people developing Alzheimer’s Disease is rapidly growing in the US, with a large percentage of those people being cared for by family or friends. Meanwhile, caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s Disease is a challenging and often stressful endeavor due to the need to manage all factors of the afflicted person’s life, along with maintaining their own well-being.
Problem Statement
For a person taking care of a loved one with dementia, the constant vigilance required in care often takes an emotional toll as they attempt to balance the care of a loved one and their own personal lives. To provide effective assistance to caregivers and loved ones, a holistic approach is needed in managing the daily care of the dementia patient and offering the caregiver a sense of well-being.
CalmerCare is an app for caregivers that provides them with tools to help manage aspects of their loved one’s life, but just as importantly, offers the caregiver methods for dealing with stress and isolation.
Methodology
Discovery
I conducted secondary research on the effects that caring for people with dementia had on caregivers and came away with these main insights
• Caring for a person with dementia is more stressful than caring for a person with a physical disability.
• Caregivers often lack social contact and support, which can lead to feelings of social isolation.
• Caregivers often sacrifice their leisure pursuits and hobbies, restrict time with friends and family, and give up or reduce their employment.
Interviews
I interviewed 5 current and former caregivers of a person with dementia.
Topics Covered
• Caregiver Responsibilities
• Coordinating Information with others
• Use of Technology
• Technological Pain Points
• Keeping Loved Ones Engaged
• Caregiver Stressors
• De-stressing
Interview Questions
Can be found here
Compiling Information & Personas
Key Takeaways of Interviews
• Caregiving is stressful and takes a mental toll on the caregiver.
• Caregivers often feel isolated and lack community
• The period spent caregiving is often viewed as one of the most challenging times of a person’s life.
• Coordinating a loved one’s important information is difficult to manage
• The solution should be helpful to both the loved one and the caregiver.
Personas
Despite their unique backgrounds, there was sufficient overlap in duties and emotions that a single caregiver persona for the home caregiver would be necessary.
HMW
How might we…
• help caregivers feel better while caring for someone?
• make information from various sources easier for caregivers to organize?
• make caregivers feel less alone?
• help caregivers feel heard?
Concept & Design
Logo
I came up with the name CalmerCare to highlight both the caregiving slant of the app and its calming features. The logo features a muted rainbow that suggests both healing and comfort while providing care.
Competitive Analysis
I found that while current caregiver apps provided a similar service to what I wanted, they had some shortcomings.
• Either too general for thorough care of the loved one or too helpful to a fault, they provided so many care options that it was overwhelming to use.
• Apps tended towards either offering self-care for the caregiver themselves or managing care for the loved one, but not both.
I opted to aim for a middle ground of offering the user the ability to care for their loved one effectively, but also to apply self-care for the caregiver. Moreover, it had to be fun to use
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Features • Event/Task list • File Cabinet • Community/Interaction • Catharsis |
Design • Minimal • Soothing • Easy to use • Fun |
It was with these parameters in mind that I came up with the CalmerCare app.
- The interface primarily displayed a caregiver task/event list with a soothing animated background.
- Secondary buttons provided a place to store the loved one’s important information, such as medical information and links to caregiver assistance and relaxation techniques.
- To make caregiving more fun, I incorporated a gamification feature where the caregiver would be awarded care points and other rewards that would result in an increased caregiver ranking, along with being awarded free widgets – fun stress-relieving ‘toys’ to play with.
Initial Sketches
Wireframe
Initial Design Concepts
Initially, I had the idea that the interface of the app would be composed of interactive bubbles that floated above an animated “lava lamp” background, before feeling that they would make the interface non-intuitive, and simplifying the interface to be semi-transparent buttons that refracted the moving background.
Final Design
After trying out various design options, I settled on a mostly monochromatic blue interface. Keeping the transparent, rounded buttons and animated background. I found using a series of stacked buttons throughout the interface made the app look too much like a wireframe and felt visually tedious, so I changed some stacked buttons into large descriptive menus and file images to add more visual interest. I had to add a darker blue due to contrast issues.
Prototyping
I then set about creating a working prototype that was as robust as possible to test out all the potential user flows.
Putting together the prototype helped me realize what flows were broken or unwieldy, which led me to make more changes to the prototype. These changes primarily focus on adding visual interest and simplifying certain flows for greater intuitiveness.
Usability Testing
Users were given a task list and then attempted to complete each task.
Tasks can be found here.
Test 1
For my usability testing, I recruited 5 people from various backgrounds to evaluate the prototype. Many were able to complete tasks, but some issues turned up, which were addressed in the next iteration.
Iteration
Test 2
I made modifications to the app and conducted another test. I recruited 5 more people to try the prototype. This time, everyone was able to complete all the tasks satisfactorily.
Participant Response:
Overall, participants thought that the CalmerCare concept was a great idea. Caregivers especially liked the combination of caregiver and loved one resources included in the app. They also appreciated the app’s gamification features, like being rewarded for completing tasks or receiving a random gift as they progressed through the app.
Curious about the app?
