- Attended 3rd session of Caring for the Caregiver
- Worked on prototypes
This week was primarily dedicated to creating wireframes and flows. As I worked through, I realized there are quite a few flows that I need to consider. As I’m working, I’m also rethinking different areas of the platform and the interactions. For example:
- Determining what features fall under “Personal Reflection” – chatbots, journals, monthly/weekly reflections, etc were all considered. Right now I decided to just have daily check-ins + affirmations and a Time Capsule feature (from my early idea concepting, because everyone I tested it with saw value in the idea), so I’m not just pumping out all the features I can.
- How to create a post in the feed? I created 5 different content types – updates, moments, milestones, encouragements, and resources. I think this information architecture (or some sort of IA) will make the feed more helpful and contextual for users.
Here is where I’m at so far with the flows, and the link to the prototype.
I will be writing the testing proposal tomorrow, and start user testing the usability/features next week.
For my Caring for the Caregiver session this week, we learned how to manage falls and help someone who’s fallen get up. We also learned about managing the challenging behaviour of a loved one who suffers from dementia. I think the most fascinating thing I learned this week, that could honestly be applied to so many different social situations, is how to redirect energy in a moment of conflict. For dementia patients specifically, they lose the ability to process language and understand or express their needs. Actually, one of the attendees suggested that we use the term “expression of unmet needs”, rather than “challenging behaviours”, and I think it is really accurate from what we discussed.
People with dementia feel discomfort or pain (e.g. body aching, the need to move around, feelings of panic/anxiety, etc) but often have trouble understand or identifying what they are experiencing. This comes before the next step of expressing these pains properly; since they cannot understand it, they certainly can’t communicate it in ways that other people can understand effectively. Their body will begin to exhibit behaviours to deal with the pain (e.g. screaming, asking repetitive questions, wandering, etc), and it’s important for caregivers to dig deep into the underlying cause of these “unmet needs”, rather than addressing them directly from the surface. This was such an insightful learning! One recommended method of doing this is documenting behavioural occurrences and looking for any correlation and patterns between events, actions, feelings, etc. to determine the underlying cause. I think this is something that I can include in my platform as well.
Next week:
- continue fleshing out wireframes for the rest of the flows
- user test my key flows (guerilla testing and testing with caregivers and care receivers I’ve been working with)
Kinsight 