Rethinking elderly care using AI
Company
Year
2018-2020
Project Type
Zero-to-one
Skills
Research, UX, Visual design, Branding
Platform
iOS, Android, Web
Role
1 of 3 Founding Product Designers
Co-founded Moneta Health, formerly called elovee, a healthcare startup focused on developing technology to improve day-to-day care for seniors with dementia.
It was the first virtual-care AI-enabled voice and video platform for seniors living with cognitive decline, that helps caregivers better address behavioral and emotional needs of seniors at care homes.
Introducing elovee
A personalised dementia care platform that combines the familiarity of family relationships with the expertise of dementia experts.
With elovee, caregivers at care homes can use recorded videos and digital renders of family members to reassure seniors when they are refusing care, and when family members can’t be present themselves.
The Experience
Context
Incubated elovee in 2019
In 2019, while I was working with BCG’s digital arm Digital Ventures, my team and I were tasked with partnering with a chain of luxury care homes in Canada to revolutionize elderly care.
Over a period of a year, our cross-functional team focused on ideating, validating, incubating and launching a company called elovee, that raised $13.5M funding right after the launch, and $30M total.
Role
Research and design (team of 3)
I was a part of the 0 to 1 founding team that created elovee and one of the three designers that worked on the product from ideation to launch.
I was leading research, synthesis and product market fit efforts at first. Later, I was responsible for designing the caregiver experience through the whole design process including feature exploration, prototyping, testing, iterating, etc
Initial process and insights
Caregivers need more effective tools to reassure seniors
Caregivers were often taking care of 5 patients at a time which made them encounter a lot of high stress situations on a daily basis.
Seniors need specialised and individualised care to stay calm
There were four major behaviour patterns that seniors experienced - agitation, angst, fixation and boredom. Each situation requiring specialised and individualised immediate care to reassure and calm them down, often in the middle of the night.
Family members often feel guilty and unsure of how to help
Family members often carried a lot of guilt for not being able to spend more time at the care home, as often life responsibilities came in the way. They also felt detached from their loved ones and expressed a need to have more constant updates on their wellbeing.
Approaching the problem
Diverge: Identifying opportunities and generating ideas
We explored different interaction models, technologies and mediums to deliver care. Our solutions ranged from creating a pet robot companion to keep a senior engaged on a daily basis to a video/voice assitant that kept them in touch with their family members at all times.
Converge: Concept and value proposition testing
To gain confidence in a direction, we conducted interviews (storyboards, prototypes and card sorting) with caregivers and family members. We learnt that interactions with family members, in person or even on a call, was sometimes we most effective way to calm seniors down in times of need.
Incubating the concept
Building the conversational model for reassurance
We worked with an expert in cognitive wellbeing in the dementia space, to design a conversational user interface (CUI) that followed a four step conversational model: seek to understand, validate, reassure and redirect.
Video and voice replication for reassurance calls
I partnered with a team of data engineers, Unity developers and product managers to deliver a quality experience for seniors. My main role in this stream was to make sure the visual and voice representation of the avatar was in sync with natural conversation.
Caregiver App
Enable caregivers to effectively reassure seniors
I spent the most of the project honing the caregiver experience of providing care to the seniors. I worked with a PM and engineers in two week sprints to define, design, test and build an app for caregivers.
Interestingly, this RCP ‘app’ was completely designed in Unity which brought with it added complexity for design and engineering.
Principle 1:
Designing for busy and overworked caregivers
Principle 2:
Asking for feedback to keep improving care
Principle 3:
Keeping shared knowledge between different caregivers
Pilot study with 17 family members and 15 residents
Creating Alignment via Branding
📈 The Impact
Raised a total of $30 million
Got 10 other residences centres to sign up for a pilot.
Raised a total of $30 million over two rounds of investment.
Got featured in The Economist as a potential gamechanger in elderly care.
Currently, elovee has pivoted to a more focused product that is using telephonic calls rather than video to provide care.
🔍 Key Learnings
Designing for AI requires setting strong ethical principles
Importance of incorporating design ethics in our everyday work. Post this project, I started creating my own ethics methodology.
Owning design throughout the design cycle from research to visual design
Designing for multiple user groups for multiple use cases
Using iterative testing with multiple user groups to improve product. More importantly, involving the whole team in research and testing.
Technology/Products can’t solve for all the problems and so mitigating its risks is important