The Essence of Meaningful Product Design
A UX Case Study by Mihaela Kandeva and Maggie Wang
As product designers in a healthcare technology company developing community-based virtual care platforms, we strive to seek solutions which improve communication between clinicians, caregivers, and care receivers — to enhance the quality of care for people in need. Our specific focus was on chronic care monitoring and management. This was our journey into solving the right problem and creating a meaningful product.
Discovery
We started with the challenge of smart home monitoring for those with chronic diseases but quickly realized that this scope was too large and needed to be narrowed down. After some quantitative research, we found:
1. According to the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), 90% of seniors want to age independently in their own home.
2. Many consumer medical devices and sensors are available on the market to help seniors and their families get connected — monitor health status and support their loved ones with day-to-day care from a distance.
3. With a smart home monitoring, care receivers, caregivers, and emergency response services can be alerted with customized notifications — via phone, email, or text message when an “at-risk” or elderly person is in need of help.
Based on these insights, we rephrased our challenge. This is how our journey began, with the idea: health monitoring could be done passively, allowing one to age independently in their own home.
In order to back up our hypothesis, we continued with qualitative research. The goal was to see what really mattered to our target audience and what their experience was with their current healthcare products (such as wearable pendants, watches, or monitoring devices). We consolidated the data and created three user stories, from both caregivers’ and care receivers’ perspectives.
We turned these user stories into “How might we” statements, which helped us focus on defining our challenge rather than jumping too quickly into solutions.
“How might we” statements
1. How might we help care receivers feel independent?
2. How might we incorporate a product into an object already a part of
care receivers’ routine?3. How might we design a product which helps care receivers feel secure?
Exploration
We focused on the local Canadian market, and for the US, chose a city with one of the highest aging populations:
Our care receivers were interviewed in their homes, to gain insight into what their environment was like. Our caregivers were interviewed in our studio.
Using user stories from our first round of research, and routine maps as a basis for the interviews, we focused on three key aspects of the care receivers’ lives: their current health and process, their social life, and the role of technology in their everyday life. We gained the following key insights:
Insight 1.
Tasks which make them feel well, also make them feel independent.
Good health and feeling well are not the same thing.Insight 2.
A key part of maintaining independence is taking precautionary measures.
Taking precautionary measures allows them to feel more independent.Insight 3.
Routine is an important strategy to help remember things.
Losing memory is a threat to independence.Insight 4.
Care receivers excel at time management because it creates a sense of purpose. Seniors with health conditions look forward to events (including doctor’s appointments), because their health often restricts the breadth of available activities.
We created a Mental Model which helped us get into the frame of mind of caregivers and care receivers. Our process for this was to listen to each interview and pick out key statements. A pattern emerged of main themes in the concerns/focus points: Health Concerns, Relationships/Social Life, Attitude/Mindset, Habits, Safety Net, Technology, and Product.
Using the Mental Model, and whiteboarding exercises, we came up with three concepts to satisfy our “How Might We” statements and further test with our interviewees.
Telemedicine — from the avoidance of the potential hassle of arranging travel to and from appointments.
Voice assisted hub to monitor the environment — from the anxiety around being alone after a fall.
Digital synced calendar — from the social aspect of the care receivers’ lives.
We worked on visualizing the journey of the care receiver from each statement in storyboards. We found this medium was familiar to non-designers and easy to digest.
The concepts and storyboards were presented during the second round of interviews to check which direction we should be going in and to dive deeper into the role technology plays in the lives of the care receivers. These main insights came through:
Insight 1.
Fall detection without a wearable was a common delight factor for all participants. Having no cameras was a core concern, but motion sensors were ok.Insight 2.
Privacy was the main value which came up in every conversation, which strongly linked to their sense of independence.Insight 3.
Communication was a real pain point for all. From care receivers not wanting to burden their loved ones with their health issues, to caregivers having to covertly check in on their loved ones, so as to not disturb them.
Definition
How do we empower the independence of seniors living alone, while providing them with peace of mind help will be there during their most vulnerable times?
Using insights from our interviews, we got to the core of what really mattered to caregivers: “If Mom or dad falls or has an emergency, I want to know right away.” And what really mattered to care receivers: “It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s how long you’re on the floor until someone finds you. At that point, as long as there’s no camera, I’m not concerned about privacy. My health is more important.”
We narrowed down our focus as one particular recurring theme really struck a chord with our interviewees: the thought of being alone for a long period of time after having a fall. We dug into quantitative research to gain some more insight into this experience and the fears around it. We confirmed:
Adults 65+ years of age experience higher rates of falling and are at a higher risk for falls. Injuries sustained from falls represent a significant threat to their health and independence.
Lying on the floor for an extended period of time often results in many medical complications or even death. Half who experience complications die within 6 months of the fall. This extended period was seen in 30% of those who fell.
Wearable devices rely on the wearer remembering to put on the device and always have it on. Since these devices are typically accelerometer based, they can also report quite a number of false positives from everyday activities.
Through the focus of fall detection, we took the insight of “routine” playing a crucial part in the lives of our care receivers as a jumping off point to start wireframing the product. We deliberately created two opposite sets: one showing as much detail as possible, the other much vaguer. Things like notifications to caregivers would only be used when something out of the ordinary occurred.
We called our interviewees back for a third and final round, to do A/B testing and to learn what their journey is like when they think there’s a health issue. Some of the final insights we gained from this were quite interesting:
Insight 1.
In moments of panic, rational thought is hard. People tend to panic as soon as they think something might possibly be wrong with their loved ones.Insight 2.
Lack of detail in an emergency situation can cause anxiety. The more detail and more clarity, the better.Insight 3.
Routine not only helps the care receivers with their daily tasks but also helps caregivers determine whether things are normal or not.
This gave us a trajectory for this product and our minimal viable product: notifying care receivers when something was wrong, in particular, when a fall occurs. Our wireframes went from a full application to bare bones: a series of notifications. While this really helped narrow the technical aspect of the product, it by no means made it easy. The concept validation was simple: “Notify me if Mom falls.” However, it involved a complex system of a voice assistant, a fall detection sensor, machine learning, and mobile messaging to reach this goal.
Conclusion
We started with something which seemed unreachable, the idea of passive health monitoring, allowing one to age independently in their own home. After a lot of time spent with caregivers and care receivers, we got down to the true root of their worries. It was not about making sure Mom or Dad was alright every second of every day, but rather, making sure they get the help they need for one particular instance of one particular day. This wouldn’t have been realized if we hadn’t done three rounds of interviews.
The first round helped us see a big picture challenge:
“I want to know Mom or Dad is ok”
The second round helped us define that challenge:
“I want to be notified if something is not ok.”
The third round helped us come up with our solution:
“How am I to be notified if something is not ok?”
Digging deep, we uncovered a common core worry: being alone lying on the floor for a long period of time after a fall. Using our “How Might We” statements, we defined our challenge and formed a solution.
How might we help care receivers feel more independent?
“Independence is very important to me. I don’t like to rely on anyone.”How might we incorporate a product into an object already a part of the care receiver’s routine?
“Routine is very important to my day, it’s how I remember to do everything that needs to be done.”How might we design a product which helps the care receiver feel secure?
“Knowing there’s something which is going to notify my loved ones when I’m in trouble is real peace of mind.”
In terms of time and effort required, it may almost look like we came out with little to show: a simple series of notifications, and a voice assistant. To the contrary, this demonstrates how much work is required to create something simple, yet actually answers the challenge and fully meets the core needs of the people whose problem we’re trying to solve. As designers and problem solvers, we tend to want to come up with solutions as quickly as possible, but we have to make sure we are solving the right problem in the first place. This is the essence of meaningful Product Design.
Thank you to all who were involved in this impactful process.
