A communication and collaboration tool
design for caregivers of seniors with cognitive impairments
Information
Author: Zhang, X.
Contributor: Vastenburg, M.H., Romero Herrera , N.
Faculty: Industrial Design Engineering
Department: Human Information Communication
Type: Master thesis
Date: 28-11-2012
Keywords: Caregiving | CSCW | Communication | Tools | Design | Cognitive impairments | Ageing
Abstract
Due to the demographic shift and aging population, the number of the seniors with cognitive impairments is increasing. In taking care of these seniors, caregivers experience both financial and emotional burdens. This project studies three care parties of this special group of people, who take care of the seniors with a mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in home settings at an early stage of disease, including case managers, home nurses and family caregivers. Main goal of this project is to design a tool to improve the communication and collaboration between them.
The insights of how caregivers experience the MCI was gained through three steps of researches: literature research, field research and in-depth research. The field research is extensively carried out in different care settings to get to know the care system and involved people. And in-depth research is further studied the needs and wishes of people in experiencing MCI. Through visiting and interviewing a lot of people, I found the three care parties are differently involved in the cooperative work. Their needs and preferences have much variation in coping with caregiving. The shared information among them is divided into common information and non-common information.
To satisfied all the three parties needs as much as possible, the design starts from solving the problem in the current situation: caregivers have miscommunication in informing caregiving activities and updating senior’s conditions using notebook. The design challenge is: To better support the communication and collaboration between caregivers by using an engaging tool. Three features are set as the design visions: in-control, friendly and connected. After exploring four design directions, I found it is crucial to develop a solution that provides immediate benefit to all stakeholders, the design direction focusing on the common information requirements is selected as the start of the design.
With the information framework, the interface development was started by placing the information components of the main interface. The chosen idea is with no particular emphasis on certain information, which applies for three care parties. Following the design visions, the visualization of the final interfaces was discussed to achieve the design challenge of making it easy to use and elaborated eventually.
The final design is elaborated into a prototype made by power point and tested with seven users of both professional caregivers and family caregivers. Generally they like the concept and the design. Also gives suggestions in terms of several aspects of design and information customize. Due to time constraints, only three points on the main interface, history interface and settings are refined. And the other suggestions are left for recommendation for the further study.
