Wordwise
Background
This project originated from the stories we hear about families that have elderly members suffering from dementia. It is hard to imagine that one day, our parents might not be able to recognize us, and that we might need to feed and bathe them.
How can we use the power of innovative technology to help track and slow down the progression of dementia? To answer this question, we read academic studies about dementia, conducted interviews with caregivers and doctors. After rounds and rounds of iteration, I'm happy to present our solution - Wordwise. Wordwise is a platform that will provide dementia patients with intellectually stimulating entertainment as well as help doctors and caregivers track patients' cognitive abilities.
Timeline
Fall 2022 - Spring 2023,
3 months
Role
Product design, research, strategy, UX design
Project Type
Individual project,
Hackathon project
Problem
By the age of 90, one in three people will have dementia.
10-12% of adults 70 and older are currently suffering from dementia
Another 22% of them have mild cognitive impairment (MCI)
Over 60% of people with dementia worldwide living in low/middle-income areas
We all have elderly members in our families that could suffer from this, and so we wanted to figure out a better way to assist people with dementia, as well as their doctors, family members and caregivers.
Research
In order to tackle the problems with dementia, we first need to understand it. So what exactly is dementia?
Dementia is not a specific disease but is rather a general term for the impaired ability to remember, think, or make decisions that interferes with doing everyday activities.
- "What is Dementia?" from CDC. gov
Different stages of dementia
-
Measurable brain changes
-
No measurable symptoms
-
Additional problems such as disorientation
-
Still able to be independent, working, and driving
-
Noticeable cognitive decline
-
Dementia diagnosis
-
Forgotten words, losing everyday objects
-
Frustration or anger
-
More problems to make decisions and remember recent events
-
Forgotten names of significant others
-
Need help doing daily tasks
Research shows the earlier we can diagnose dementia, the better we can treat it. Since the trial for detection in the pre-clinical is almost impossible, we have identified mild cognitive impairment (MCI) as our addressable target. Then, we conducted interviews to learn more about the needs of people with dementia.
Who should we talk to?
-
People that currently have dementia, preferably in MCI stage (hard to reach)
-
Caregivers/family members of people with dementia
-
Doctors that are experienced in the field of dementia diagnosis and treatment
What are the things we want to know?
-
We want to understand the medical side of dementia treatment: what are the most useful ways to fight against dementia? What aspects we should focus on? What do the doctors care about the most?
-
We want to understand the social side of dementia treatment: to family members and caregivers, what are the most difficult things they run into when taking care of people with dementia?
What are our findings, and how can we help?
Interview Data
One of the doctors we talked to told us what she cared about the most: "We want more data about the patient's cognitive abilities. Most of them come in once every 6 months, which is not enough."
How-Might-We
How might we collect enough data about cognitive abilities for medical purposes?
The doctors we talked to also shared with us that: "Social Interactions and intellectual stimulation are usually the most viable and recommended ways to delay dementia. But this is also very hard to track."
How might we facilitate easy social interaction and intellectual stimulation for our users?
One of our interviewees expressed concerns for taking care of people with dementia: "We know that we are supposed to keep him occupied and interacting with different people, but it's just hard with the majority of the family working in a different country."
How might we reduce the financial and emotional costs for caregivers or family members?
Ideation
After researching and interviewing, we have successfully identified the pain points/How-Might-We's of the problem. We then collectively did brainstorming for our solution to the problem.
Our Solution
With everything we did in research and brainstorming, we came up the idea of Wordwise💡
Wordwise is a collaborative gaming platform that will support the tracking of dementia progression. It is designed for people with early stages of dementia, as well as their caregivers and doctors. With the current treatment, it is hard for patients to provide doctors with sufficient data about their cognitive abilities, and caregivers, usually family members, also find difficulties in taking care of them. Wordwise will tackle these problems by increasing the social interaction and intellectual stimulation of dementia patients with collaborative scrabbling, and recording the data backstage to share with medical professionals. By simply playing games with their friends, we can help slow down the progression of dementia. The experience will be engaging, meaningful and fun!
Storyboard
To help you better understand the scenarios that Wordwise can be applied in real life, and what problems it might solve, I also created the following storyboard that shares with you the story of Moshe Levi.
Design
Information Architecture
The features and the flow of information of Wordwise can be seen from the chart on the right. The four main pages of the app will be the home page, friends page, data page, and the physician page. The key feature of Wordwise will be the "Game" page, but we put it under the social feature to ensure that our users need to initiate a social interaction in order to enter the game. There are still many features to be designed, but for now, this is the information structure I will be working on.
Wireframes
Flow 1: Home 🏠
Flow 2: Friends 🧑🤝🧑
Flow 3: Data 📈
Flow 4: Physician 🏥
Design System
For the colors of the app, we want to use some colors that are neutral, yet modern and interesting. Therefore, we choose black and blue, and play with them a little bit to adjust their shades to our final theme colors. The other colors in the systems are the variations of lightness based on the two main theme colors of our choice. Based on the same principles, we decided to choose Urbanist for our font as it's modern, low-contrast and geometric-inspired. In addition to changes in font size, we also play around with the thickness of the fonts. For instance, the sizes of heading 3, paragraph 1, and paragraph 2 are actually the same, it is the thickness of the fonts that distinguish one from the others.
Prototype
Flow 1: Home 🏠
-
Log in: using username or email to log in to your account
-
Sign up: create a new account
-
Profile summary: the user's profile image, name
-
Data summary: brief summary of the user's recent activity on app
-
Online friends: the friends that are currently online
-
Invite: entering the gaming feature
Flow 2: Friends 🧑🤝🧑
-
Friends: a list of all the user's friends, with people online showing on the top
-
Confirm: transition page to confirm that the user is ready to play
-
Actual game page: Interactive scrabble that requires participation and collaborative. Voice-chat is also enabled.
Flow 3: Data 📈
-
Profile summary: the user's profile image and the duration of the recorded data
-
Favorite: the visualizations of the favorite types of data that the users selected
-
All data: all the data that are recorded in the Wordwise app, the users can view the details and add them to favorites
Flow 4: Physician 🏥
-
Subscribe: a promotion page for the users
-
Physician: shows the user's current physician, with options to contact
-
All physicians: a list of all physicians that are registered in the Wordwise system. Users can choose to connect with a new physician.
Reflections
Good teamwork is uplifting and inspirational!
I've started this project to participate in the 2023 Mindstate ideation competition, in which I get to work with some amazing teammates. We come from different countries, attend different schools and we all have very unique life stories. At first, I felt difficult to work with the team because of all the differences we have. But I later realized that it is the diversity that brings us new perspectives and inspirations. Their insights from business, engineering, and social sciences have all contributed so much to the ideation process, and have therefore made the design so much easier. I had a wonderful time working with these people, and I want to thank them sincerely for their passion, patience, and productivity.
Designing for accessibility
This project is designed to help the people with dementia, as well as their caregivers, family members, and physicians. The target users of this group are not what we know as the "regular people", and it is also my first time designing for a special group. However, throughout the process of this project, I felt like my mind has been expanded because I always need to push myself out of the comfort zone, thinking from perspectives I have never realized existed. I realized that designing for accessibility is an importance source of innovation, and I look forward to working on more projects like this.
What's next?
So what are the next steps for this project? There are many things yet to be developed. Due to the limitations in time, I have not yet designed some detailed pages for different features, and I believe that this app has the potential to do much more. For example, I could design different versions of Wordwise for caregivers and physicians so that we can know what exactly is the information they are getting. In addition, I want to develop a chat feature for the app so that it is easier for the users to communicate. The metrics of evaluation should also be more carefully considered. Moving on, these are just some of the thoughts I have.