PROJECT DETAILS
Intent
Summer Design Challenge 2020
Duration
6 Days
Role
UI/UX Design
Researcher
Design Strategist
Team
Alisa Elliot
Daphne Hancock
Mirna Tejeda
Shariq Mallick
Heidi Ward
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Designers Alisa Elliott, Daphne Hancock, Mirna Tejeda, Shariq Mallick, and I created CareKeeper during a 6 Day Design Challenge in our Summer Studio at University of Texas at Austin's MA in Design program. We explored common challenges that non-professional caregivers experience on a daily basis to create a "Health Hack". We discovered that medical information/document organization and sharing was a large obstacle. With this problem in mind, we dove into the design process to create CareKeeper.
DESIGN PROCESS
RESEARCH
SYNTHESIZE
IDEATE & PROTOTYPE
TEST & ITERATE
RESEARCH
My team and I conducted two remote interviews with non-professional caretakers on their personal experience and daily life caring for their loved ones. We utilized ecosystem models, artifact analysis, and journey mapping to uncover pain-points. We documented everything to create a data wall for each interview.
We started to synthesize data by affinity mapping into emerging themes, digging deeper to turn themes into insights. It was found that Information sharing is a significant, often daunting aspect of health and healthcare. Maintaining current, accurate information often falls to the person who spends the most time with a patient, leaving that individual significantly burdened with "the best version" of information and care. Sharing updated information, in real-time, with a care team, relieves any single caregiver from acting as the knowledge vault for a patient and empowers multiple members of a family or healthcare team to provide relevant care.
The healthcare system is a complex system of workers and information and is often overloaded. The patient is always the one to suffer because of this, leaving patients/family feeling overwhelmed and betrayed. There are many different people involved in a patient's care at all times. If there is no cohesion between these individuals, patients can be left feeling lost in the system and don't even know who to go to for help. When this happens, it is up to the support system of the patient to pick up the slack, at the expense of their own mental and physical wellbeing. Support systems are often not professionally trained and are expected to fill in these gaps in care. All involved in patient care need to be on the same page and have clear, consistent lines of communication.
The information that will be stored within our design is of a very sensitive nature, including medical history, doctors appointments, medication, insurance, and more. Having this information in one place requires extreme data security and protection. At the same time, those who will be managing this information are non-professional caretakers who will need this design to be simple and accessible.
SYNTHESIS
THE PROBLEM
Non-professional caretakers experience difficulties keeping track of the multitude of documentation involved in caring for their loved ones. The ever changing and sensitive nature of this information also makes sharing the caretaking load among family members extremely difficult.
IDEATE & PROTOTYPE
Our Design Must...
Maintain current, accurate information about an individuals health and care
Aid in connecting all involved in a patients care.
Safe and accessible
INITIAL PROTOTYPE
Our interviewees were drawn to the ecosystem model we used during our interviews, and liked everything being centered around one person. We started to brainstorm all the different types of information that would need to be organized here. This inspired our design layout for CareKeeper.
TESTING
We user tested our lo-fi prototype with other project teams, taking feedback, adding and subtracting features, and revising our initial design.
FINAL PROTOTYPE
CAREKEEPER
CareKeeper is the organizational app designed to streamline a caregivers documentation and organization. Now you can have all relevant information involved in caring for your loved ones just three clicks away. Inspired by the Ecosystem Model used during interviews, CareKeeper puts the individual at the center of their care. Around each individual, information is clearly organized into five categories: Profile, People, Current Treatment, History, and Schedule.
PROFILE
Within an individual's Profile, information such as insurance cards, drivers license, medical directives, allergies, and more can be stored. As will all information stored in CareKeeper, just snap a picture of the document and upload.
PEOPLE
An individuals care-team may consist of multiple doctors, specialists, nurses, pharmacists, and family. Having all contact information for these people in one place keeps everyone on the same page during appointments and at home.
CURRENT TREATMENT
Current treatment is one of the most important pieces of information for a care team. It is essential that it is separate, easily accessible, and up to date. With the pill ID feature, just search up the medication name to have a picture of the correct pill to minimize any errors.
HISTORY
Medical history can quickly become an encyclopedia of documents. Now you can have a quick record of past appointments, surgeries, medication, vaccinations, and labs to better inform your team and future appointments.
SCHEDULE
Keeping track of the numerous appointments involved in care is a job of its own. With the Scheduling feature, book and view appointments with auto-populated care-team information.
"WHO'S IN YOUR HIVE"
Your Hive contains all of the people under your care. This could be children, elderly parents, spouses, or any loved one.
"QUEEN BEE"
The Queen Bee feature is designed to control sharing capabilities for information security. Queen Bee is a designated individual who is in control of sharing information to the rest of the individuals care team or Hive, who only have viewing and uploading ability. The Queen Bee could be the patient, or primary caretaker depending on levels of independence.
