Digital Companion for Dementia | Internship Project

A digital companion to support persons with Early-stage Dementia, their Caregivers, and their Clinicians

  • Timeline

    Jan 2022 - May 2022 (5 Months)

  • Team

    Platform Development Team

    Content Team

    Design

  • My Role

    - Conducted User Research Interviews

    - Insights Generation and Mapping

    - Market Research

    - Research on Accessibility and Designing for Persons with Dementia

    - Features Mapping

    - UI/UX Design, and prototypes for Mobile Apps for Caregivers, Doctors and Persons with Dementia

Project Brief

A digital companion to support persons with early-stage dementia, their caregivers, and their clinicians.

A person with early-stage Dementia: Cognitive activities and tools to prevent symptom worsening

Caregiver: Tools to monitor and manage a loved one with dementia

Clinician: Tools to monitor and track persons with dementia

App Development (I worked here!) | Content Production | Behaviour Change Communication Strategy | Community Management | Communication

 

Secondary Research

To get started with the project, I read various resources (Publications and Articles from the Brainsight Resource Folder) to get an overview of the topic - Dementia.

 

Primary Research

Conducted Qualitative Research Interviews with 6 Caregivers of Persons with Dementia and a Neuropsychiatrist.

 

What did we do?

  1. We curated a Research Protocol describing the background, rationale, objectives, design, methodology, statistical considerations, and organization of the project.

  2. We conducted Semi-Structured Interviews on Zoom with Saathealth's and BrainSightAI's team members present.

    • I led and co-led all of the interviews.

  3. Curated a list of potential questions to ask based on secondary literature research.

  4. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed.

  5. Data were analyzed to extract common themes.

    • The data points were all organized in Excel.

    • Common Themes and Insights were extracted through discussions.

Objectives:

  1. To understand the experiences of caregivers of PwDs in the Indian context, given the different familial and societal structures

  2. To understand the gaps in dementia and caregiving knowledge

  3. To understand the impacts of COVID-19 on symptom exacerbation and dementia management

  4. To identify unmet needs in the caregiving process

  1. To understand the Journey of Dementia from Diagnosis to Prognosis

  2. To understand the treatments and medications available

  3. To understand the Physician’s needs

 

User Journey Mapping

I worked on designing the User Journey Maps (crucial in building empathy through strong narratives) for all our three stakeholders: PwD, their Caregivers and the Clinicians to better understand every aspect of each stakeholder’s journey and aid all the design decisions.

 

Review of Global Digital Companion Solutions

I conducted a thorough secondary research on all the available Global Digital Companion Solutions to understand the overall service being provided and the most common features deployed to aid in making our digital companion best suitable for all developed keeping in mind, the best practices present in the market.

 

Designing for a PwD - Accessible Design

Considering we were developing a digital companion for Persons with Dementia, I did thorough research on the Guidelines to design digital interfaces for PwD.

References: Alzheimer's Society and Ability Net

Key Points

 

Features Mapping

I worked closely with the Product Manager, Developer and Content Team to create a features map to visualize the big picture of the product features with the purpose of structure and value creation for the stakeholders. The attributes considered were: Deployment Time and The scale of Feature Importance. This helped us finalize what would go into the MVP and what would be in the future roadmap of the project.

 

High-Fidelity Wireframes / Prototype (MVP) - Iteration 1

I worked closely with the Graphic Designer, Product Manager, and Developer and went through various rounds of critique and iterations to finalize the journey flows and visual themes for the App.

Final screen designs / prototypes were made on Adobe XD + using Adobe XD Plugins for Icons, Illustrations and Images

Visual Language

 

Caregiver App

 

Clinician App

 

Person with Dementia App

Note: These were the first round of iterations. I hope to rework based on the feedbacks received for the same as a Personal Project soon.

Key Learnings

 

Exploring m-Health / Dementia / Accessibility Design

Expanding my knowledge through thorough literature review and learning from my co-workers about a topic as intensive as Dementia and designing for the healthcare sector was both challenging and interesting.

Keeping in mind that I was designing for Persons with early stages of dementia, I learnt and understood the importance of accessible design principles and the impact it creates in delivering the best user experience.

Following the UX Process

Considering it was live project and a new product to be launched, It was a great holistic learning experience working end to end starting from Primary Research to Prototyping.

I got to work closely with all the relevant Stakeholders and Business Collaborators as we developed the solution and finally thoroughly enjoyed and learnt a lot from all the iterating sessions with the PM and the developer.

Virtual Collaborations

Considering this was a remote working experience, it was interesting and fun to collaborate, coordinate and deliver with the team in the virtual space.