Project
My Role
Sahayak is a system designed to facilitate senior citizens in their well being, with scheduling and providing assistance to them and their family members or caretakers through communication and monitoring.
User Research -- UI Design -- Usability Testing
Team Size
5
THE PROCESS
The design process is iterative. As we proceeded onto each stage, we refined our problem statement, each time gaining a better understanding. We started our journey with a problem in hand, performed a user research, ideated over the problem, come up with a solution and designed a prototype that cater to our problem. Finally we got it tested with the users and improvised our system.
PROBLEM
"83% out of 10000 senior citizens were found isolated in old age (60+) and 89% of 10000 were facing healthcare problems"
Agewell Foundation NGO
For welfare of senior citizens, since 1999
Senior citizens require assistance for their well being, and family members are not always available to take care of them due to distance or busy work schedule.
Most of the senior citizens are not well adapted and up to date with the new technology. They do not explore new areas or befriend new people, hence remaining in their own bubble. They feel lonely, dependent and disconnected from their loved ones. What if there existed a simplified technology which helped the senior citizens to become self sufficient and well connected with their family members?
SOLUTION
Through this system they will be able to monitor their own health
and carry out their daily activities effeciently, while also having their
family members or loved ones more involved in their lives.
DESIGN PROCESS
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
We analysed three products which are solving a similar problem as we thought of. We got a perspective of
acceptable solutions that can help old people in bridging the gap and provide assistance in the daily activities. We picked the features that old people already value in the products. We looked over the business goals of each product and analysed their market share. We formulated and compared the three products and summarized with the best possible features from each of the three products. The products we chose were already solving some part of our problem. This aligned with the possible solutions that can be addressed to solve the problem. There were many satisfactory user feedbacks and the shortcomings which were available for the products.
Once we had performed our market study, we knew what already existed and what was lacking. The exisiting products although were able to monitor health, were still not able to efficiently bridge the gap between the elder citizens and their family members/caretakers. All the competitors that we looked at are more focused towards monitoring the user, keeping track of their health but couldn't include active participation of the caretakers into the user's life. That is what our product sought to accomplish!
USER STUDY
We conducted 15 interviews in total with a mixture of contextual(4) and semi-structured(11) interviews. 10 Interviews were with elderly citizens and 5 with family members or caretakers.
Outcomes
1. A few elderlies were tech-friendly, well adapted and able to communicate with family frequently,
2. A few elderlies didn't require assistance with their daily routine.
3. Family members felt they wanted to be a part of their parents' life,
4. Family members were always concerned about the health of their seniors
5. All elderlies required assistance with technology
6. All elderlies wanted medication reminder system (in fact, most required reminder for their appointment
AFFINITY MAPPING
Before defining the Persona-Scenario, we made an affinity map from the user research for both the stakeholders. The problem of lack of communication was between both ends. So to bridge the gap between the two users, it was essential to consider the personas and scenarios for the two of them. We created an affinity diagram by mapping out the attributes under different possible categories. For the senior citizens, we were concerned about the themes like dependencies, health, daily activities and exposure to technology. While on the other hand, for caretakers, our focus was on interaction with the elderly, knowledge of their health and time spent with them. The affinity diagram helped in getting a clearer picture of the problem of the user. We joined the dots to validate the assumption we had about the problem and hence we were able to create persona and scenarios.
We did three Persona-Scenario out of which two were of old people and one of the family member. We wanted to take into account the various aspects and conditions faced by the users, so we took the old people of different living conditions. One of them was living with family and the other one was living alone. This would help us to consider all the factors while drawing the scenario. The first persona is of an old, retired and married businessman who stays with his family. He is tech-Friendly and uses his smartphone for many other apps apart from the basic features. His frustrations included less interaction with loved ones, the requirement of assistance to carry out tasks and not lack of good memory. We created a scenario, where the user overcome his frustrations through his desired goals using our interface. In the second, we showed up a persona with a different background. An old widow, in her late 70’s who’s living alone and helping herself out in carrying out daily chores. Her frustrations are a bit different from the previous one. Staying alone away from her family makes her incapable of attending many occasions and she ends up missing many doctors appointments as well. It is very difficult for her to go and fetch daily products from the market. She gets bored while staying alone at her place. The third one is that of a family member who is unable to spare much time for her parents. She stresses about not being able to take ample care of her parents. She isn’t able to know how her parents are doing right at that moment.
After the Persona-Scenario, we did Scenario-Mapping, which includes the building of strategy of all the key features of the applications that the target user can use to perform the task specified in the persona-scenario. It analyzes if the task is capable to fulfil all the goals of the user.
This design process helps in creating an environment for demonstrating the key features of the application. It conveys how an archetype can overcome the frustrations while following the task specified in the scenario. The design representation in our case helped us to get an overview of all the problems that user can face and how we can build an ideal system incorporating the needs of all. The information conveyed through the persona-scenario enlightens us the need for a system that can help in task scheduling, health monitoring and an interface which can successfully help the users to overcome the communication gap.
STORYBOARDING
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
The product we aimed at was for the old people and we wanted to keep very minimal functionalities considering the technological background they have. We didn’t wish to complicate things for them and wanted to include only the key features that were essential for solving the problem. Our key features included Health monitoring, task schedular and the communication medium. Considering Level-1 to be the Home Page of the app, Level-2 comprised of the key features available and Level-3 represented the functionalities of Level-2. This helped us in creating a hierarchy we wished to create for displaying our content. We wished to keep the minimalistic navigation and avoid any kind of complexity. We created taxonomies for listing out similar features under the same label. For example, we kept all the physical wellness features under one label so that it becomes easy during the navigation.
Scenario for User Flow
1. User checks his schedule for the day
2. User is notified of a health anomaly, in this case, low blood pressure on his device, detected by the Sahayak band
3. Home remedies for the same are suggested, along with an option to get details of doctors (with respect to the health
issue).
4. User chooses a doctor and shares it with his daughter to set an appointment
5. His daughter then books an appointment with the doctor of the user's choice such that she can also accompany him
for the same.
6. The appointment is sent to the user and he adds it to his calendar.
PROTOTYPING
We used the fidelity aspect of the prototyping. We created wireframes, where our aim was to focus on the arrangement of UI elements on the screen. Design decisions were an integral part of wireframing where you need to decide the text size, location, graphics and how to interaction with various screens. We as a group started with low fidelity.
Low-Fidelity
Mid-Fidelity
Hi-Fidelity
CLICK ON THE BUTTON BELOW TO ACCESS THE PROTOTYPE!
USABILITY TESTING
I conducted two guerrilla testing on the target users, one out of which was virtual and other was in person. My aim was to select users from diverse background to cover a broader perspective of design faults. This helped me get a diverse feedback as well. The first user for my testing was Mr C.P. Jain. He is retired now and lives his wife. He lives in the colony where he has friends who pass their time sitting together in the evening. His son lives an hour drive away from him. Though he is able to carry out his daily tasks, really needs a task schedular cause he keeps forgetting things. The other testing was done on Mrs Shakuntla Wadhwa, who lives alone in the house and looks after herself. She has some social interaction but often finds herself getting bored and lonely. Her son isn’t able to contact her on daily basis. The two users have entirely different purpose for use the product and hence helped in giving better feedback for the key features our product was aiming at.
Improvising the Prototype
FUTURE SCOPE
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Connecting elderlies with their friends and other senior citizens and not just their family members. This builds a stronger community!
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Integarting can facilities like Uber within the application so that can become more self-sufficient
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Working on the ergonomics of the Sahayak band and tablet