FridgiCare
The user experience and user interface design of a mobile application for caretakers of individuals with dementia accompanying a dementia-friendly smart fridge
Project Overview
Individuals with dementia living at home experience difficulties in the kitchen related to the consumption of unsafe food due to deterioration of memory and loss of situational awareness. Caregivers respond to the needs of individuals with dementia, including falls; hygiene; bathroom use; shopping; cooking; and cleaning. Non-immediate needs can often become rushed or even forgotten due to the cognitive load associated with caring for the immediate needs of individuals with dementia. The objective of this project was to reduce the cognitive load associated with non-immediate tasks for caregivers.
Project Circumstances and My Role
This project was completed for course requirements, where the user research was completed individually for SYDE 348: User-Centred Design Methods, and the design of the prototype was worked on as a team for BME 361: Biomedical Engineering Design. My role included the development of both primary and secondary user personas, collaboration on the design of the user interface, as well as user research and user testing methods.
User Research Personas
Persona Development
Primary research was gathered through stakeholder interviews (shown in blue) and the fly-on-the-wall approach (shown in orange), and secondary research was gathered through a literature review (shown in green). Three stakeholders were interviewed to gather user information: a caregiver at a long-term care home, a family doctor, and a doctor at the Research Institute for Aging. A modified fly-on-the-wall approach was used to gather caregiver narratives through the monitoring of relevant Facebook groups and reddit threads.
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This research was used as a guide for the creation of two user personas: one to outline the primary user being the caregiver, and the second to outline the secondary user being the individual with dementia. The goal of this research was to obtain a more thorough understanding of the day-to-day lives of caregivers and individuals with dementia, with specific care to identify their goals, needs, and frustrations to ensure that the developed solution is able to have a positive impact.
Impact of Personas on Design
The two personas enabled the identification of both the primary usability goals as well as the use experience goals of the system. The usability goals were that the application be efficient to use and easy to learn, and the user experience goals were to be effortless, helpful, and secure.
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The personas were referenced heavily during the design of the mobile application, primarily to ensure that the use of the application does not introduce unnecessary tasks for the caregiver, in order to achieve the defined usability and user experience goals.
User Testing: Tree Tests
Purpose of Tree Testing
Before the initial design of the user interface, tree testing was performed to evaluate the hierarchical structure of the wireframe by having users identify locations in the tree where specific tasks can be completed. Based on the results of these tests, the usability was able to be measured in terms of whether it is efficient to use and easy to learn.
To test whether the application is efficient to use, the user should take no more than 10 seconds to locate a task, ensuring that the device does not add any unnecessary time to daily responsibilities. To determine whether the application is easy to learn, the user should have a success rate in task completion greater than 95% when first using the application, ensuring that the layout is intuitive.
Implementation of Tree Testing
TreeJack—an online tree test platform—was implemented, where the nodes and children of the tree were inputted, and the tasks along with their correct answers were defined. Test participants included classmates and friends, however the design was not tested on the application developers to avoid any bias. These users were not part of the target user group of caregivers, and so to further test the usability goals, caregivers would ideally be tested. This remote test was completed by 10 users, and so another next step would be to obtain stronger data through the testing of a greater number of users. Each user was instructed to complete three tasks.
Understandings of Usability
The test results demonstrate that the average task completion times for the three tasks were 3.08, 2.7, and 3.03 seconds, respectively, and the maximum task completion time of all three tasks was 6.4 seconds. There was a success rate of 100% across all three tasks, where each success was a direct success, meaning that the user identified the correct branch the first time.
The maximum time of 6.4 seconds allowed for a conclusion that the application layout is efficient to use, as it does not exceed the maximum time to locate a task of 10 seconds. The success rate of 100% allows for a conclusion that the application layout is easy to learn, as it surpasses the goal of a 95% success rate.
User Interface Design
Design Process
Once the wireframes were completed and tree testing results were obtained, I began designing the first prototype using InVision. This prototype was designed to accommodate an iOS application, as the team had experience with iOS development.
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I chose to follow a light visual style, as its simplicity and brightness is more likely to ensure a calm and effortless user experience. These aspects of the user experience were crucial in the design since the caregivers often experience higher-than-average levels of stress and anxiety.
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One of the details that fills me with pride are the icons on the grocery screen depicting each item. This was chosen so that items could be identified by a simple glance, as opposed to only requiring the user to read the item, providing a more effortless user experience. Though reading the item is not a time-consuming act, the added cognitive load of sifting through a page of plain text to find groceries would negatively affect the efficiency of the app use, and would not be providing the user with an effortless user experience.
Future Iteration
If this project were to be continued, further usability and user experience testing would be required. It was planned that the team would participate in cognitive walkthroughs and user journey analyses, however due to the pandemic this was not possible. One of the next modifications would be to introduce more colour into the text and icons, in order to grab the user's attention more effectively, and to increase the liveliness of the application.
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Another modification would be instead to choose icons to represent tiles such as the cooking and grocery tiles on the home page, as well as the specific meals on the meal page. This way, the images are not a distraction from the task, thus decreasing the associated cognitive load and increasing the efficiency of use.