Resume
Bobby Zhao
Design Strategist
One-stop-shop for transitioning caregivers
Time
Jan. 2024 - May 2024
Team
Asha Wills, Bobby Zhao, Emma Stone, Yimei Hu
Responsibilities
Design Research,User Interview, Ideation, UIUX
Background
53 Million
people in the US provide unpaid care to either an adult or child
AARP
24-41 hrs/week
is the average time caregivers spend in providing care for family members
AARP
84%
of caregivers report needing more information on caregiving topics
AARP
1
High touch - Caregiver
Debra has the most interaction with Edward (care receiver), her primary concern with the most influence over her behavior
2
Medium touch - Care Team
A robust care team and Debra’s other family members interact with her on a weekly basis
3
Low touch - Institutions
Debra’s decisions and experience are influenced by several institutions with systemic influence but low touch
Problem Discovery & Definition
36
Detailed
Survey Participants
14
In-depth Caregiver Interviews
540
Minutes of
Insights
Survey
Prior to in-depth one-on-one interviews, we designed a detailed survey questionnaire to provide us with preliminary understanding of the family caregiver profile. We refined our interview guide based on the findings in this survey.
Interview Design
Interviews Insights
Getting effective strategies to cope with receiver’s changing conditions is difficult due to:
Non-responsive
Not personalized
Research-intensive
“I can't get any other for profit or nonprofit organizations around or to return my phone calls or email inquiries. They have more demand than they do available employees. And they probably don't make as much money off of some of them like me rather than a contract with the state to run a group home for five or 10 people.”
Rachel
“I reached out to the Alzheimer's Association about tips on what to say and how to respond to her. And in the end, I didn't have a lot of answers. They referred me to some, like help groups, you know, for caregivers, which I never tapped into. I've never had time.”
Ann
“Support groups is how I started really learning. And then I also just was on Instagram a lot trying to find different people who specialized in Alzheimer’s dementia, trying to figure out different patterns that my mom has and how to deal with them.
Denine
“They (Area Agency on Aging) have a caregiver support program available. I haven't really been able to take advantage of that yet. Just because getting in touch with the coordinator has been really hard...”
Eugenia
“My neighbor's mother had some form of dementia. And she would talk about her husband’s stories… like totally kind of like mine. Sure. So every situation is a little bit different. But it’s help to know how others have been dealing with it.”
Ann
“I'm not trying to sound like a hero or anything, but once you've gone through it, it's just so nice to be able to help people that are in the same boat as they are in their community or in their workplace”
Rebecca
Caregiving support services are lacking in quality, accessibility and affordability
Availability Inconsistency & Inflexibility
Lacking of Training and Experience
Lacking of Affordability
Incompatibility
“They're it's either a second job for them or they're a college student and the two college students they they'll they'll lie to you, they lied to me and they'll lie to you about schedule and their availability, so then it just becomes impossible to schedule them.”
Rachel
“there's a lot of unpredictability with the worker schedule, and then not show that day you might get three or four different caregivers in a week, which really isn't ideal for someone frail and compromised. And so they don't have the experience of working with that individual.”
Jodi
“Some of them have minimum amount of hours that they'll do per week. It’s really hard trying to find somebody with that low of hours. Also there's a lot of people who just aren't experienced. They say that they are or they've worked with them, but they really aren't. They may have worked with someone with dementia, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're trained
Denine
“The specific difficulty was that whether it if it's a scheduling conflict or mismatching personalities, or anything that's related to, I guess, the difficulty in retaining like a long term caregiver to
help is the need or doing I think the biggest thing”
Nicole
“We didn't know how long we would need the help and it was going to be very expensive. Like it was like $55 an hour for the caregiver through the agency. ”
Ann
“Even if we had like 10 grand coming in every month, good luck hiring it. I mean, it's just like even if you do have the money, you know you have to pay a lot to get quality semi quality care.”
Rachel
Caregiving team is hard to coordinate
Hard to update all caregivers as conditions change
Game of telephone to relay information between family and medical team
Medication management is extremely anxiety-producing for people with no prior experience
“Lots of different doctors, but everyone it all everything's connected everyone's can get a hold of each other's information. So that way if the cardiologist puts them on something, gives him a medication. The kidney doctor knows and it's like, Oh wait, no, he can't have that because that will affect his kidneys. Everybody's connected …”
Monique
“Yeah, I think I think they need good primary care at home but it's just it's a hard model model financially for hospitals to invest in like they invest in hospital at home but they don't invest in primary care at home.”
Jennifer
“...Having to have the responsibility to [administer] end of life pain management … still to me like feels like this weird fantasy out of body experience because I felt like I just had to completely disassociate in order to perform”
Becca
“Medication Management: This became a huge issue. Months before going into assisted living where they took on medication management, I had to help my mom take her meds somehow, from a distance.”
Ann
Solution Development
Design Guideline
01
Must integrate seamlessly into the user's daily routine.
02
Must lessen the user's cognitive load.
03
Must be cost-effective and affordable
Ideation
Product Goals
We began product conceptualization with the brainstorming and affinity mapping of product feasibility and desirability goals.
Storyboard
Extension
Engagement
Enticement
User sees WeCare poster at key clinic waiting room and is handed WeCare journal
User scans QR code to download app or visits website
User enters information to set up profile
User browses through personalized caregiving guideline and community knowledge shares based on matching algorithm
User experiences frustration in a specific caregiving task
Visitor hunts for key phrases on WeCare, eyeing possible remedies
User browses through solutions/strategies posted by other family/professional caregivers (personalized knowledge transfer)
User tries out and fine tunes different solutions.
User documents each solution experience and strategy variance based on the modification
User’s modified solution is added to the online repertoire as a solution variation
The Journal Packet
Offers a high-level overview of caregiving, equipping them with guiding and reflective questions around 5 key areas:
Finding Care
Financing Care
Coordinating care
Planning Ahead
Caring for Yourself
The Digital Twin
Exploration
Journal to Digital
Navigation
Problem-specific
Resources
Execution
App to Journal
Engagement
Social Connection
In-depth
information hub
Personalized
Results
Applicable
Materials
Dynamic
Community
Exploration
Journal to App
Navigation
Personalized Directory
Action
App to Journal
Engagement
Community Connection
Partner with nonprofits, employers, and health insurance companies to get wecare journals into the hands of family members transitioning into caregiver roles for an aging loved one.
