HealthTech

Mobile

UX Research

Business strategy

Build healthier habits and stay connected with your wellness team

The Wellness Team app concept aims to motivate care recipients to build healthier habits by supporting their sense of autonomy, achievement, and connection while supporting caregiver needs for clear communication and daily activity management. This product concept was inspired by my experience as a caregiver and after conducting ethnographic research, shadowing an informal caregiver in their daily routines.

Timeline

First iteration: Sep - Nov 2022

Second iteration: May 2023 - July 2023

Project type

A passion project for my portfolio inspired by my experience as a caregiver & my Caretap EVV Service Design project.

Roles

I led Product Design & UX Research and received mentorship from Radu Vucea

Scroll to final prototype walkthrough

Design process

Why I chose this project

After my experience as a caregiver and wellness seeker, I wondered: How can we support formal and informal caregivers?

Norma B. Coe and Rachel M. Werner stated, 

”Family members are an invisible workforce in nursing homes and residential care facilities, providing considerable front-line work for their loved ones.

Providers and policymakers could improve the lives of both the residents and their caregivers by acknowledging, incorporating, and supporting this workforce”(Health Affairs 2022). 

Design thinking framework implementation

Empathize

  • Ethnographic field study

  • User Interview

  • Observations from personal experience

Define

  • User Journey Mapping

  • Initial Persona

  • Secondary research

Ideate

Sketching user flows

Prototype

Hi-fi prototypes

Test

Concept testing

Prototype

Iterate on hi-fi prototype based on feedback

Observing caregivers in their environment

Generative research

Ethnographic research

Field study

Generative primary research

Taking an ethnographic research approach as opposed to a scientific one, I’m going into this exploratory research without a hypothesis. My main goal is to observe someone from our target audience in their natural environment. A Field study will give us a better understanding of these potential users, their environment, the context of use, how they adapt to un-matched needs, and the “bigger picture”(NNGroup 2016).

Overarching research questions

  1. What can a “day in the life” of an informal caregiver look like?

  1. Do informal caregivers track their activities?

  1. If so, how do they track their activities?

  1. Does the Caretap EVV mobile app solve some of these needs?

Research methodologies

Direct observation

The site visit was conducted overtly in the participant's home that they share with multiple other family members, including the primary recipient of care, their father.

Adaptive interview

Throughout the site visit, I asked about their daily routines and the tools they use. As done in conversations, I refined my questions as I learned from the participant(NNGroup 2016).

I also requested an initial reaction to the Caretap app's process for recording activities and asked if it seemed helpful to them.

What I learned during the field study

Qualitative data

Top tools the participant uses for themelves and as a caregiver

Wellness tools

  • Oura ring app: Tracking their quality of sleep & other physiological signals

  • Zero app: Tracking intermittent fasting hours

  • Oak app: Meditation/breathing exercises

  • Waking Up app: Listening to talks on stoicism and daily meditations

  • Notion app: Tracking healthy recipes

Care management tools

  • iPhone Notes App: Recording symptoms & general task management

  • Keto Mojo app: Measuring his father’s ketones & glucose levels

  • Health Mate app: Measuring and tracking his father’s blood pressure

  • Renpho app: Measuring and tracking body weight, visceral fat, and other bio-markers using a smart scale.

  • Pen & paper: For grocery and to-do lists.

  • Dry eraser boards: For reminders, checklists, and messages to other family members.

Key insights

Caregivers & wellness seeker overlaps

The participant was passionate about maintaining a healthy lifestyle as a form of preventative healthcare and optimizing his quality of life and that of his loved ones.

Tracking bio-metrics & activities

Experimenting & tracking bio-metrics and activities were a major part of this informal caregiver and wellness seeker’s routine.

Task + collaboration management needs

Informal caregivers can feel overwhelmed with responsibilities, struggling to keep track of high-level activities & communicate with care team.

The participant’s most notable reactions to the Caretap EVV app

The recurring theme was that the Caretap app did not meet his needs as a caregiver nor as someone who seeks to improve/track their wellness.

iPhone mockups of two Caretap screens.

"This app seems like it’s geared towards the agency, but I want something I can use that reduces friction for me, the caregiver."

"This seems like it was made for someone else to get an accounting of what’s being done. This has no use for me. It’s just telling other people what’s being done. I want something that helps me manage my day and tasks. Something that makes my day easier and can be shared."

"I know what I do. That doesn’t help me plan the day, manage a task, appointments, errands, activities, or meals. So, I would not use this."

Conclusion

From the field study and adaptive interview, informal caregivers can be swamped with responsibilities and could benefit from a service that facilitates task management and communication with those involved in the care activities, including recipients of care.

Brainstorming possible directions

Ideation

HMWs

How might we support wellness routines?

How might we empower wellness seekers with data?

How might we facilitate communication among a support team?

Considering diverse needs

Inclusive design

Personas

Wellness Team aims to solve the needs of informal caregivers and wellness seekers. Since these groups aren’t reporting their activities to an insurance company, their motivations for using the product differ significantly.

The Wellness Team's target audience

By now, I had a fuller picture of what it can mean to be a caregiver and wellness seeker and some of their core motivations. I learned about the tools they may use, their daily routines, and how they communicate with and on their support network.

Based on my newfound understanding, I recognize that our solution must be tailored to fit into a complex context, considering the time and emotional energy constraints that come with being a caregiver.

To keep these nuances at the forefront when solving user needs, I formed a Persona, Vicky, to help us minimize the risks associated with “missing the mark” if we were to forget, dismiss, or minimize some of the qualitative insights uncovered during the field study.

Designing more inclusively with Microsoft’s inclusive Toolkit.

The Persona Spectrum

I plan to use inclusive design tools such as the Persona Spectrum to capture our users' potentially permanent, temporary, and situational needs when using our mobile apps(Microsoft Inclusive Toolkit 54, n.d.).

A visual representation of the Persona Spectrum by Microsoft demonstrated varying needs of people.

The Persona Spectrum from Microsoft’s Inclusive Design 101 Toolkit p.22

The Persona Network

In this toolkit for inclusive design, the authors wrote, “Just as no person exists in isolation, neither does the Persona Spectrum. The Persona Network includes friends, coworkers, family members or even strangers”(Microsoft Design n.d.).

The Persona Network as a tool and activity can help me better understand the context in which users potentially interact with our services. This is especially relevant to our target audience, who are caregivers.

One use-case scenario could be a wellness seeker who is also an early adopter using Wellness Team to optimize their health and would also like to use the app to keep track of their parent’s activities since they haven’t yet warmed up to the technology. 

Inclusive UX Writing

We will use gender-neutral language where possible and apply other inclusive design best practices to design an experience that feels welcoming to as many people as possible.

If you're curious, I wrote 6 ways web accessibility is good business

In this article, I share how my perspective as a UX Designer on accessible web design has changed since learning more about it, six ways it can help organizations meet their business goals, and why we shouldn’t let perfectionism get in the way of our efforts. Note: I’m simply someone who wants to learn how to design more inclusively. I’m not, by any means, a subject matter expert on web accessibility.

Read on Medium

Proposed solution

Figma prototype

Interaction design

Circling back

How can we support formal and informal caregivers?

Daily routine management

Empower users with access to personal data

Support collaboration & privacy

Conducting concept testing

Evaluative research

User Interview

Getting feedback on Wellness Team's value proposition

This concept test included an adaptive interview, where I asked follow-up questions based on comments made by the participant. 

iPhone mockups of the Wellness team app onboarding and home screens.

Top insights

Since I only tested with one participant from our target audience, this feedback was a directional positive signal over fully validated.

Validated assumptions

The participant liked how the activities were stackable, draggable, and could be expanded to see more details. 

When asked what he expected to see after tapping on an activity block, he said somewhere to write notes on that specific activity and share it with the other caregivers invited to this activity.

He said he would like a habit tracker for each activity to easily view the current streak and the total times an activity was completed. 

High priority

The participant didn’t know what to expect from tapping on “explore” label in the bottom navigation.

If the care recipient uses the app and is on the team, the participant would like the option to manage the privacy settings for these messages since there are some things he may need to communicate with the other caregivers but not with the person receiving care or vice versa.

Mid-priority

The participant said it would be helpful if team members could leave notes under each activity. The app could notify users with a gold/orange notification icon in the relevant activity block, so when other teammates open the app, they can see an unread message. The participant said this would facilitate timely and targeted communication with those with whom he shares care responsibilities. 

Presenting the Wellness Team app concept

Figma prototype

Interaction design

Mockup of the Wellness Team mobile app routine home screen.

Behind the scenes in Figma

Birds eye view of the Figma file with the high fidelity wireframes with prototype interactions visible.

Features inspired by primary research

Qualitative insights

Hi-fi prototype

Activities are grouped into routines

During the ethnographic field study, I learned that the participant had morning, afternoon, and evening routines comprised of various activities.

Draggable and stackable activities

During concept testing, our target audience pointed out how they liked that activities were flexible to adapt to changes in their daily routines.

Communication, connection and motivation

The app facilitates timely and targeted communication with a person's support team, which was mentioned as an important feature during primary research.

Next steps

Qualitative insights

Hi-fi prototype

High priority

Conduct another round of evaluative research

Iterate on designs based on feedback

Design the rest of the MVP user flows

Decide which features will be behind a paywall

Mid-term

Design for various devices, including Apple Watch

Export prototype to HTML & test with people who use assistive technology

Conduct web accessibility & heuristic audit

Backlog

Conduct QA testing

Soft launch

Uncover & solve for edge cases

Prioritize improvements, new features, & partnerships based on feedback

Measuring performance

Quantitative

  • Revenue

  • Costs

  • Profit margins

  • Conversion rates

  • Web vs. app use

  • Number of downloads

  • Number of active users

  • User retention rate

  • CSAT score

  • Usability testing metrics

Qualitative

  • User Interview insights

  • Reviews

  • Social listening

  • Survey qualitative questions

  • Field study observations

Targets/timelines

To be determined

Outcomes & lessons

Post-mortem

Reflection

From a business perspective, the strategy and UX methods I’ve applied in this project reduce the financial risks tied to our riskiest assumptions and improve our chances of achieving product/market fit.


These prototypes can be used to conduct additional user research, such as usability testing, to iterate or pivot on the product offering before coding the apps, significantly reducing development costs.


These interactive prototypes and research insights can also be used to effectively communicate user needs and product vision when pitching for funding.


Some of the lessons I’ve learned over the course of this project were:

• Some of the limitations of conducting asynchronous usability testing with prototypes

• How to spot bot activity in survey responses and quickly adapt

• The value of building the front-end of the app as an MVP to test with people who use assistive technology.

• Protopie can be used to prototype more complex/advanced interactions, which can support collaboration with developers and evaluative research efforts.

Scroll to final prototype walkthrough

Mockup of the Wellness Team mobile app with the routines preview expanded.
Mockup of the Wellness Team mobile app with a list of activities and calendar preview.

That's all for now. Thanks for taking the time!

Scroll back to the top

Email me

LinkedIn profile

@zoebria

Say hello!

An iphone 14 laying on a desk with the updated Caretap EVV designed by Zoe pulled up next to some journals, a coffee, and computer.

Improving Caretap EVV's Home Healthcare Provider Experience

The Wellness Team app concept aims to motivate care recipients to build healthier habits by supporting their sense of autonomy, achievement, and connection while supporting caregiver needs for clear communication and daily activity management. I developed this concept inspired by my experience as a caregiver and after conducting ethnographic research and shadowing an informal caregiver.

See case study

Person holding an iphone with the Wellness Team mobile app with the inventory management app Zoe designed pulled up, showing the inventory dashboard.

Omni-channel Inventory Management for Micro Businesses Owners

The Wellness Team app concept aims to motivate care recipients to build healthier habits by supporting their sense of autonomy, achievement, and connection while supporting caregiver needs for clear communication and daily activity management. I developed this concept inspired by my experience as a caregiver and after conducting ethnographic research and shadowing an informal caregiver.

Open in Confluence

HealthTech

Mobile

UX Research

Business strategy

Build healthier habits and stay connected with your wellness team

The Wellness Team app concept aims to motivate care recipients to build healthier habits by supporting their sense of autonomy, achievement, and connection while supporting caregiver needs for clear communication and daily activity management. This product concept was inspired by my experience as a caregiver and after conducting ethnographic research, shadowing an informal caregiver in their daily routines.

Timeline

First iteration: Sep - Nov 2022

Second iteration: May 2023 - July 2023

Project type

A passion project for my portfolio inspired by my experience as a caregiver & my Caretap EVV Service Design project.

Roles

I led Product Design & UX Research and received mentorship from Radu Vucea

Scroll to final prototype walkthrough

Design process

Why I chose this project

After my experience as a caregiver and wellness seeker, I wondered: How can we support formal and informal caregivers?

Norma B. Coe and Rachel M. Werner stated, 

”Family members are an invisible workforce in nursing homes and residential care facilities, providing considerable front-line work for their loved ones.

Providers and policymakers could improve the lives of both the residents and their caregivers by acknowledging, incorporating, and supporting this workforce”(Health Affairs 2022). 

Design thinking framework implementation

Empathize

  • Ethnographic field study

  • User Interview

  • Observations from personal experience

Define

  • User Journey Mapping

  • Initial Persona

  • Secondary research

Ideate

Sketching user flows

Prototype

Hi-fi prototypes

Test

Concept testing

Prototype

Iterate on hi-fi prototype based on feedback

Observing caregivers in their environment

Generative research

Ethnographic research

Field study

Generative primary research

Taking an ethnographic research approach as opposed to a scientific one, I’m going into this exploratory research without a hypothesis. My main goal is to observe someone from our target audience in their natural environment. A Field study will give us a better understanding of these potential users, their environment, the context of use, how they adapt to un-matched needs, and the “bigger picture”(NNGroup 2016).

Overarching research questions

  1. What can a “day in the life” of an informal caregiver look like?

  1. Do informal caregivers track their activities?

  1. If so, how do they track their activities?

  1. Does the Caretap EVV mobile app solve some of these needs?

Research methodologies

Direct observation

The site visit was conducted overtly in the participant's home that they share with multiple other family members, including the primary recipient of care, their father.

Adaptive interview

Throughout the site visit, I asked about their daily routines and the tools they use. As done in conversations, I refined my questions as I learned from the participant(NNGroup 2016).

I also requested an initial reaction to the Caretap app's process for recording activities and asked if it seemed helpful to them.

What I learned during the field study

Qualitative data

Top tools the participant uses for themelves and as a caregiver

Wellness tools

  • Oura ring app: Tracking their quality of sleep & other physiological signals

  • Zero app: Tracking intermittent fasting hours

  • Oak app: Meditation/breathing exercises

  • Waking Up app: Listening to talks on stoicism and daily meditations

  • Notion app: Tracking healthy recipes

Care management tools

  • iPhone Notes App: Recording symptoms & general task management

  • Keto Mojo app: Measuring his father’s ketones & glucose levels

  • Health Mate app: Measuring and tracking his father’s blood pressure

  • Renpho app: Measuring and tracking body weight, visceral fat, and other bio-markers using a smart scale.

  • Pen & paper: For grocery and to-do lists.

  • Dry eraser boards: For reminders, checklists, and messages to other family members.

Key insights

Caregivers & wellness seeker overlaps

The participant was passionate about maintaining a healthy lifestyle as a form of preventative healthcare and optimizing his quality of life and that of his loved ones.

Tracking bio-metrics & activities

Experimenting & tracking bio-metrics and activities were a major part of this informal caregiver and wellness seeker’s routine.

Task + collaboration management needs

Informal caregivers can feel overwhelmed with responsibilities, struggling to keep track of high-level activities & communicate with care team.

The participant’s most notable reactions to the Caretap EVV app

The recurring theme was that the Caretap app did not meet his needs as a caregiver nor as someone who seeks to improve/track their wellness.

iPhone mockups of two Caretap screens.

"This app seems like it’s geared towards the agency, but I want something I can use that reduces friction for me, the caregiver."

"This seems like it was made for someone else to get an accounting of what’s being done. This has no use for me. It’s just telling other people what’s being done. I want something that helps me manage my day and tasks. Something that makes my day easier and can be shared."

"I know what I do. That doesn’t help me plan the day, manage a task, appointments, errands, activities, or meals. So, I would not use this."

Conclusion

From the field study and adaptive interview, informal caregivers can be swamped with responsibilities and could benefit from a service that facilitates task management and communication with those involved in the care activities, including recipients of care.

Brainstorming possible directions

Ideation

HMWs

How might we support wellness routines?

How might we empower wellness seekers with data?

How might we facilitate communication among a support team?

Considering diverse needs

Inclusive design

Personas

Wellness Team aims to solve the needs of informal caregivers and wellness seekers. Since these groups aren’t reporting their activities to an insurance company, their motivations for using the product differ significantly.

The Wellness Team's target audience

By now, I had a fuller picture of what it can mean to be a caregiver and wellness seeker and some of their core motivations. I learned about the tools they may use, their daily routines, and how they communicate with and on their support network.

Based on my newfound understanding, I recognize that our solution must be tailored to fit into a complex context, considering the time and emotional energy constraints that come with being a caregiver.

To keep these nuances at the forefront when solving user needs, I formed a Persona, Vicky, to help us minimize the risks associated with “missing the mark” if we were to forget, dismiss, or minimize some of the qualitative insights uncovered during the field study.

Designing more inclusively with Microsoft’s inclusive Toolkit.

The Persona Spectrum

I plan to use inclusive design tools such as the Persona Spectrum to capture our users' potentially permanent, temporary, and situational needs when using our mobile apps(Microsoft Inclusive Toolkit 54, n.d.).

A visual representation of the Persona Spectrum by Microsoft demonstrated varying needs of people.

The Persona Spectrum from Microsoft’s Inclusive Design 101 Toolkit p.22

The Persona Network

In this toolkit for inclusive design, the authors wrote, “Just as no person exists in isolation, neither does the Persona Spectrum. The Persona Network includes friends, coworkers, family members or even strangers”(Microsoft Design n.d.).

The Persona Network as a tool and activity can help me better understand the context in which users potentially interact with our services. This is especially relevant to our target audience, who are caregivers.

One use-case scenario could be a wellness seeker who is also an early adopter using Wellness Team to optimize their health and would also like to use the app to keep track of their parent’s activities since they haven’t yet warmed up to the technology. 

Inclusive UX Writing

We will use gender-neutral language where possible and apply other inclusive design best practices to design an experience that feels welcoming to as many people as possible.

If you're curious, I wrote 6 ways web accessibility is good business

In this article, I share how my perspective as a UX Designer on accessible web design has changed since learning more about it, six ways it can help organizations meet their business goals, and why we shouldn’t let perfectionism get in the way of our efforts. Note: I’m simply someone who wants to learn how to design more inclusively. I’m not, by any means, a subject matter expert on web accessibility.

Read on Medium

Proposed solution

Figma prototype

Interaction design

Circling back

How can we support formal and informal caregivers?

Daily routine management

Empower users with access to personal data

Support collaboration & privacy

Conducting concept testing

Evaluative research

User Interview

Getting feedback on Wellness Team's value proposition

This concept test included an adaptive interview, where I asked follow-up questions based on comments made by the participant. 

iPhone mockups of the Wellness team app onboarding and home screens.

Top insights

Since I only tested with one participant from our target audience, this feedback was a directional positive signal over fully validated.

Validated assumptions

The participant liked how the activities were stackable, draggable, and could be expanded to see more details. 

When asked what he expected to see after tapping on an activity block, he said somewhere to write notes on that specific activity and share it with the other caregivers invited to this activity.

He said he would like a habit tracker for each activity to easily view the current streak and the total times an activity was completed. 

High priority

The participant didn’t know what to expect from tapping on “explore” label in the bottom navigation.

If the care recipient uses the app and is on the team, the participant would like the option to manage the privacy settings for these messages since there are some things he may need to communicate with the other caregivers but not with the person receiving care or vice versa.

Mid-priority

The participant said it would be helpful if team members could leave notes under each activity. The app could notify users with a gold/orange notification icon in the relevant activity block, so when other teammates open the app, they can see an unread message. The participant said this would facilitate timely and targeted communication with those with whom he shares care responsibilities. 

Presenting the Wellness Team app concept

Figma prototype

Interaction design

Mockup of the Wellness Team mobile app routine home screen.

Behind the scenes in Figma

Birds eye view of the Figma file with the high fidelity wireframes with prototype interactions visible.

Features inspired by primary research

Qualitative insights

Hi-fi prototype

Activities are grouped into routines

During the ethnographic field study, I learned that the participant had morning, afternoon, and evening routines comprised of various activities.

Draggable and stackable activities

During concept testing, our target audience pointed out how they liked that activities were flexible to adapt to changes in their daily routines.

Communication, connection and motivation

The app facilitates timely and targeted communication with a person's support team, which was mentioned as an important feature during primary research.

Next steps

Qualitative insights

Hi-fi prototype

High priority

Conduct another round of evaluative research

Iterate on designs based on feedback

Design the rest of the MVP user flows

Decide which features will be behind a paywall

Mid-term

Design for various devices, including Apple Watch

Export prototype to HTML & test with people who use assistive technology

Conduct web accessibility & heuristic audit

Backlog

Conduct QA testing

Soft launch

Uncover & solve for edge cases

Prioritize improvements, new features, & partnerships based on feedback

Measuring performance

Quantitative

  • Revenue

  • Costs

  • Profit margins

  • Conversion rates

  • Web vs. app use

  • Number of downloads

  • Number of active users

  • User retention rate

  • CSAT score

  • Usability testing metrics

Qualitative

  • User Interview insights

  • Reviews

  • Social listening

  • Survey qualitative questions

  • Field study observations

Targets/timelines

To be determined

Outcomes & lessons

Post-mortem

Reflection

From a business perspective, the strategy and UX methods I’ve applied in this project reduce the financial risks tied to our riskiest assumptions and improve our chances of achieving product/market fit.


These prototypes can be used to conduct additional user research, such as usability testing, to iterate or pivot on the product offering before coding the apps, significantly reducing development costs.


These interactive prototypes and research insights can also be used to effectively communicate user needs and product vision when pitching for funding.


Some of the lessons I’ve learned over the course of this project were:

• Some of the limitations of conducting asynchronous usability testing with prototypes

• How to spot bot activity in survey responses and quickly adapt

• The value of building the front-end of the app as an MVP to test with people who use assistive technology.

• Protopie can be used to prototype more complex/advanced interactions, which can support collaboration with developers and evaluative research efforts.

Scroll to final prototype walkthrough

Mockup of the Wellness Team mobile app with the routines preview expanded.
Mockup of the Wellness Team mobile app with a list of activities and calendar preview.

That's all for now. Thanks for taking the time!

Scroll back to the top

Email me

LinkedIn profile

@zoebria

Say hello!

An iphone 14 laying on a desk with the updated Caretap EVV designed by Zoe pulled up next to some journals, a coffee, and computer.

Improving Caretap EVV's Home Healthcare Provider Experience

The Wellness Team app concept aims to motivate care recipients to build healthier habits by supporting their sense of autonomy, achievement, and connection while supporting caregiver needs for clear communication and daily activity management. I developed this concept inspired by my experience as a caregiver and after conducting ethnographic research and shadowing an informal caregiver.

See case study

Person holding an iphone with the Wellness Team mobile app with the inventory management app Zoe designed pulled up, showing the inventory dashboard.

Omni-channel Inventory Management for Micro Businesses Owners

The Wellness Team app concept aims to motivate care recipients to build healthier habits by supporting their sense of autonomy, achievement, and connection while supporting caregiver needs for clear communication and daily activity management. I developed this concept inspired by my experience as a caregiver and after conducting ethnographic research and shadowing an informal caregiver.

Open in Confluence

HealthTech

Mobile

UX Research

Business strategy

Build healthier habits and stay connected with your wellness team

The Wellness Team app concept aims to motivate care recipients to build healthier habits by supporting their sense of autonomy, achievement, and connection while supporting caregiver needs for clear communication and daily activity management. This product concept was inspired by my experience as a caregiver and after conducting ethnographic research, shadowing an informal caregiver in their daily routines.

Timeline

First iteration: Sep - Nov 2022

Second iteration: May 2023 - July 2023

Project type

A passion project for my portfolio inspired by my experience as a caregiver & my Caretap EVV Service Design project.

Roles

I led Product Design & UX Research and received mentorship from Radu Vucea

Scroll to final prototype walkthrough

Design process

Why I chose this project

After my experience as a caregiver and wellness seeker, I wondered: How can we support formal and informal caregivers?

Norma B. Coe and Rachel M. Werner stated, 

”Family members are an invisible workforce in nursing homes and residential care facilities, providing considerable front-line work for their loved ones.

Providers and policymakers could improve the lives of both the residents and their caregivers by acknowledging, incorporating, and supporting this workforce”(Health Affairs 2022). 

Design thinking framework implementation

Empathize

  • Ethnographic field study

  • User Interview

  • Observations from personal experience

Define

  • User Journey Mapping

  • Initial Persona

  • Secondary research

Ideate

Sketching user flows

Prototype

Hi-fi prototypes

Test

Concept testing

Prototype

Iterate on hi-fi prototype based on feedback

Observing caregivers in their environment

Generative research

Ethnographic research

Field study

Generative primary research

Taking an ethnographic research approach as opposed to a scientific one, I’m going into this exploratory research without a hypothesis. My main goal is to observe someone from our target audience in their natural environment. A Field study will give us a better understanding of these potential users, their environment, the context of use, how they adapt to un-matched needs, and the “bigger picture”(NNGroup 2016).

Overarching research questions

  1. What can a “day in the life” of an informal caregiver look like?

  1. Do informal caregivers track their activities?

  1. If so, how do they track their activities?

  1. Does the Caretap EVV mobile app solve some of these needs?

Research methodologies

Direct observation

The site visit was conducted overtly in the participant's home that they share with multiple other family members, including the primary recipient of care, their father.

Adaptive interview

Throughout the site visit, I asked about their daily routines and the tools they use. As done in conversations, I refined my questions as I learned from the participant(NNGroup 2016).

I also requested an initial reaction to the Caretap app's process for recording activities and asked if it seemed helpful to them.

What I learned during the field study

Qualitative data

Top tools the participant uses for themelves and as a caregiver

Wellness tools

  • Oura ring app: Tracking their quality of sleep & other physiological signals

  • Zero app: Tracking intermittent fasting hours

  • Oak app: Meditation/breathing exercises

  • Waking Up app: Listening to talks on stoicism and daily meditations

  • Notion app: Tracking healthy recipes

Care management tools

  • iPhone Notes App: Recording symptoms & general task management

  • Keto Mojo app: Measuring his father’s ketones & glucose levels

  • Health Mate app: Measuring and tracking his father’s blood pressure

  • Renpho app: Measuring and tracking body weight, visceral fat, and other bio-markers using a smart scale.

  • Pen & paper: For grocery and to-do lists.

  • Dry eraser boards: For reminders, checklists, and messages to other family members.

Key insights

Caregivers & wellness seeker overlaps

The participant was passionate about maintaining a healthy lifestyle as a form of preventative healthcare and optimizing his quality of life and that of his loved ones.

Tracking bio-metrics & activities

Experimenting & tracking bio-metrics and activities were a major part of this informal caregiver and wellness seeker’s routine.

Task + collaboration management needs

Informal caregivers can feel overwhelmed with responsibilities, struggling to keep track of high-level activities & communicate with care team.

The participant’s most notable reactions to the Caretap EVV app

The recurring theme was that the Caretap app did not meet his needs as a caregiver nor as someone who seeks to improve/track their wellness.

iPhone mockups of two Caretap screens.

"This app seems like it’s geared towards the agency, but I want something I can use that reduces friction for me, the caregiver."

"This seems like it was made for someone else to get an accounting of what’s being done. This has no use for me. It’s just telling other people what’s being done. I want something that helps me manage my day and tasks. Something that makes my day easier and can be shared."

"I know what I do. That doesn’t help me plan the day, manage a task, appointments, errands, activities, or meals. So, I would not use this."

Conclusion

From the field study and adaptive interview, informal caregivers can be swamped with responsibilities and could benefit from a service that facilitates task management and communication with those involved in the care activities, including recipients of care.

Brainstorming possible directions

Ideation

HMWs

How might we support wellness routines?

How might we empower wellness seekers with data?

How might we facilitate communication among a support team?

Considering diverse needs

Inclusive design

Personas

Wellness Team aims to solve the needs of informal caregivers and wellness seekers. Since these groups aren’t reporting their activities to an insurance company, their motivations for using the product differ significantly.

The Wellness Team's target audience

By now, I had a fuller picture of what it can mean to be a caregiver and wellness seeker and some of their core motivations. I learned about the tools they may use, their daily routines, and how they communicate with and on their support network.

Based on my newfound understanding, I recognize that our solution must be tailored to fit into a complex context, considering the time and emotional energy constraints that come with being a caregiver.

To keep these nuances at the forefront when solving user needs, I formed a Persona, Vicky, to help us minimize the risks associated with “missing the mark” if we were to forget, dismiss, or minimize some of the qualitative insights uncovered during the field study.

Designing more inclusively with Microsoft’s inclusive Toolkit.

The Persona Spectrum

I plan to use inclusive design tools such as the Persona Spectrum to capture our users' potentially permanent, temporary, and situational needs when using our mobile apps(Microsoft Inclusive Toolkit 54, n.d.).

A visual representation of the Persona Spectrum by Microsoft demonstrated varying needs of people.

The Persona Spectrum from Microsoft’s Inclusive Design 101 Toolkit p.22

The Persona Network

In this toolkit for inclusive design, the authors wrote, “Just as no person exists in isolation, neither does the Persona Spectrum. The Persona Network includes friends, coworkers, family members or even strangers”(Microsoft Design n.d.).

The Persona Network as a tool and activity can help me better understand the context in which users potentially interact with our services. This is especially relevant to our target audience, who are caregivers.

One use-case scenario could be a wellness seeker who is also an early adopter using Wellness Team to optimize their health and would also like to use the app to keep track of their parent’s activities since they haven’t yet warmed up to the technology. 

Inclusive UX Writing

We will use gender-neutral language where possible and apply other inclusive design best practices to design an experience that feels welcoming to as many people as possible.

If you're curious, I wrote 6 ways web accessibility is good business

In this article, I share how my perspective as a UX Designer on accessible web design has changed since learning more about it, six ways it can help organizations meet their business goals, and why we shouldn’t let perfectionism get in the way of our efforts. Note: I’m simply someone who wants to learn how to design more inclusively. I’m not, by any means, a subject matter expert on web accessibility.

Read on Medium

Proposed solution

Figma prototype

Interaction design

Circling back

How can we support formal and informal caregivers?

Daily routine management

Empower users with access to personal data

Support collaboration & privacy

Conducting concept testing

Evaluative research

User Interview

Getting feedback on Wellness Team's value proposition

This concept test included an adaptive interview, where I asked follow-up questions based on comments made by the participant. 

iPhone mockups of the Wellness team app onboarding and home screens.

Top insights

Since I only tested with one participant from our target audience, this feedback was a directional positive signal over fully validated.

Validated assumptions

The participant liked how the activities were stackable, draggable, and could be expanded to see more details. 

When asked what he expected to see after tapping on an activity block, he said somewhere to write notes on that specific activity and share it with the other caregivers invited to this activity.

He said he would like a habit tracker for each activity to easily view the current streak and the total times an activity was completed. 

High priority

The participant didn’t know what to expect from tapping on “explore” label in the bottom navigation.

If the care recipient uses the app and is on the team, the participant would like the option to manage the privacy settings for these messages since there are some things he may need to communicate with the other caregivers but not with the person receiving care or vice versa.

Mid-priority

The participant said it would be helpful if team members could leave notes under each activity. The app could notify users with a gold/orange notification icon in the relevant activity block, so when other teammates open the app, they can see an unread message. The participant said this would facilitate timely and targeted communication with those with whom he shares care responsibilities. 

Presenting the Wellness Team app concept

Figma prototype

Interaction design

Mockup of the Wellness Team mobile app routine home screen.

Behind the scenes in Figma

Birds eye view of the Figma file with the high fidelity wireframes with prototype interactions visible.

Features inspired by primary research

Qualitative insights

Hi-fi prototype

Activities are grouped into routines

During the ethnographic field study, I learned that the participant had morning, afternoon, and evening routines comprised of various activities.

Draggable and stackable activities

During concept testing, our target audience pointed out how they liked that activities were flexible to adapt to changes in their daily routines.

Communication, connection and motivation

The app facilitates timely and targeted communication with a person's support team, which was mentioned as an important feature during primary research.

Next steps

Qualitative insights

Hi-fi prototype

High priority

Conduct another round of evaluative research

Iterate on designs based on feedback

Design the rest of the MVP user flows

Decide which features will be behind a paywall

Mid-term

Design for various devices, including Apple Watch

Export prototype to HTML & test with people who use assistive technology

Conduct web accessibility & heuristic audit

Backlog

Conduct QA testing

Soft launch

Uncover & solve for edge cases

Prioritize improvements, new features, & partnerships based on feedback

Measuring performance

Quantitative

  • Revenue

  • Costs

  • Profit margins

  • Conversion rates

  • Web vs. app use

  • Number of downloads

  • Number of active users

  • User retention rate

  • CSAT score

  • Usability testing metrics

Qualitative

  • User Interview insights

  • Reviews

  • Social listening

  • Survey qualitative questions

  • Field study observations

Targets/timelines

To be determined

Outcomes & lessons

Post-mortem

Reflection

From a business perspective, the strategy and UX methods I’ve applied in this project reduce the financial risks tied to our riskiest assumptions and improve our chances of achieving product/market fit.


These prototypes can be used to conduct additional user research, such as usability testing, to iterate or pivot on the product offering before coding the apps, significantly reducing development costs.


These interactive prototypes and research insights can also be used to effectively communicate user needs and product vision when pitching for funding.


Some of the lessons I’ve learned over the course of this project were:

• Some of the limitations of conducting asynchronous usability testing with prototypes

• How to spot bot activity in survey responses and quickly adapt

• The value of building the front-end of the app as an MVP to test with people who use assistive technology.

• Protopie can be used to prototype more complex/advanced interactions, which can support collaboration with developers and evaluative research efforts.

Scroll to final prototype walkthrough

Mockup of the Wellness Team mobile app with the routines preview expanded.
Mockup of the Wellness Team mobile app with a list of activities and calendar preview.

That's all for now. Thanks for taking the time!

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An iphone 14 laying on a desk with the updated Caretap EVV designed by Zoe pulled up next to some journals, a coffee, and computer.

Improving Caretap EVV's Home Healthcare Provider Experience

The Wellness Team app concept aims to motivate care recipients to build healthier habits by supporting their sense of autonomy, achievement, and connection while supporting caregiver needs for clear communication and daily activity management. I developed this concept inspired by my experience as a caregiver and after conducting ethnographic research and shadowing an informal caregiver.

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Person holding an iphone with the Wellness Team mobile app with the inventory management app Zoe designed pulled up, showing the inventory dashboard.

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The Wellness Team app concept aims to motivate care recipients to build healthier habits by supporting their sense of autonomy, achievement, and connection while supporting caregiver needs for clear communication and daily activity management. I developed this concept inspired by my experience as a caregiver and after conducting ethnographic research and shadowing an informal caregiver.

Open in Confluence