Guiding Design Principles
Design Goal
- Both the aging population and their caregivers typically want them to remain living independently, in the comfort of their own home for as long as possible.
- Adult children’s’ biggest concern about their aging parents and the main motive behind placing them in a nursing home is their lack of confidence that the are safe and/or keeping up with their own health with living independently.
- This product needs to fulfill a functional, emotional, and psychological end for our target customer, the adult children of this aging population.
- Functional: Provide both the doctor, and chosen family members with daily information. Information could include, but is not limited to, daily activity, vitals, if medication was taken, if meals were eaten and bed rest.
- Emotional: Connect families, especially remote families, on a day-to-day basis. Even by getting simple notifications that their loved ones are doing okay that day, families will feel more connected and involved in each others lives.
- Psychological: Provide the adult children the piece of mind they need to confidently allow their aging parents to continue aging in place. Assure them that their parents are safe and healthy without disrupting their own daily lives.
User Perceptions
- Our proposed product is a very important aspect of their emotional well-being, but even more so crucial for the well-being of their aging loved one. Then as the cycle of life continues the product will hopefully remain in their lives and be used as they begin to age themselves.
- In terms of aesthetic attributes of this product, there are a few things we want to avoid. If a wearable product is designed, it should not resemble a “Life Alert”, but instead be a much sleeker, understated device. If a cueing product is designed, to track their medication for instance, aesthetics do not play as propelling of a role. We must keep in mind however that the product must be large enough for the aging population to easily see/use and must not be reliant on listening cues, as many of them suffer from poor hearing.
Problems/ Needs/ Opportunities
- The target user’s main preferred outcome while engaging with this product is for the most part simply a piece of mind.
- Many of them do not have a way to truly know how their aging parents are doing on a day to day basis nor do they have the time to care or check on them as often as they would like.
- This product offers them that piece of mind that their loved ones are safe, and healthy without disrupting or sacrificing anything in their own busy lives.
Functional Attributes:
- The product should be personalizable, in that, it should allow users to customize what it monitors based on the need and/ or reliance on the product.
- The product should also allow users to customize which doctors and which family members information is sent to.
- Compatibility comes into play significantly with this product. The product must be able to successfully synchronize with the target customer’s mobile device and with the designated doctor(s) networks/ devices.
Constraints
- The technological capacity of Unitedhealth Group could become a constraint in the creation of this product.
- The source and amount of funding Unitedhealth Group and Optium is willing to put forth may be a major constraint in thinking about solutions. Unfortunately, we do not yet have an idea of how much is a feasible amount we could work with.
- Willingness to adopt technology and the capacity to use it may become a constraint among the aging population.
- The cost of this product on the user’s side could become a constraint.
- The adoption of this product by doctors could potentially become a limitation.