Caregiver journey micro-site design

Deliverables

The Scope

While our organization had been serving veteran caregivers for the past decades, it only recently explored the direct-to-consumer approach. Were needs of family caregivers different from those of veterans’ caregivers? How did their concept of caregiver identity impacted their search for help? What knowledge gaps prevented them from efficiently achieving their goals as they searched for resources and help? And how would they perceive a micro-website dedicated to supporting their search for caregiving strategies?

Four Weeks to Launch

This micro-site was researched, built and tested in four weeks. With tight deadlines, I immediately incorporated the feedback from each research activity into the site’s content and design, on an iterative basis. I also worked with over 15 caregivers and several collaborators to help create the experience.

Domain Research

The domain research included both secondary research with online ethnographic observation and literature review. I then incorporated five caregivers to help better outline the factors that affected their experience in searching for help.

Generative Research

The initial plan was looking at storyboarding as mechanism for storytelling. It quickly became apparent, however, that caregivers had their own way to retelling their story. I shifted the approach to Deep Listening, and combined it with task analysis for the portions of the stories that touched on searching for resources.

Whenever possible, I did my best to leave time before and after interviews. This was crucial as the stories shared were often intimate, personal and difficult, and I wanted to have the time to hear it all without rushing participants. Sometimes, some stories brought difficult emotions or traumatic responses. It was also important for me to leave the space for these things to occur, and not add stress to fit the story into a tight time frame. My priority was making sure participants felt good, respected and that they could go at their own pace when recounting difficult stories.

I was often touched by their courage and their humanity. It sometimes took me a small break after our interviews to digest the depth of their experience. Unlike consumer products, talking about caregiving sacrifices, end of life and loss of social support while serving were deeply personal and emotional discussions.

Rapid Prototyping

The micro-site involved a team spread between Australia and the USA. Because of the time zone differences, I opted for detailed documentation, enabling us to work asynchronously and reference issues with precision.

Prior to documenting the final design, I did a research on design patterns currently used by other providers of healthy lifestyle programs. While not being a direct competitor, they offered a proxy, since our service is a new product category and there are few offerings in the space.

From there, I designed a basic flow. For the prototype, we were limited by out-of-the-box functionalities, since we did not want to invest a lot in designing a solution prior to testing and researching it. In this first iteration, we were mostly concerned with content, as well as depth and order of information display.

Evaluative Research

In evaluating the prototype, I sought to identify whether caregivers resonated with the text presented. The copy tested well in terms of content. The second level of analysis concerned decision-making. I wanted to understand what information they would require to decide whether or not to join a program such as our. In addition, I also wanted to understand how they evaluated our trustworthiness when they did not know the organization. In the past, we have always worked in partnership with trusted organization, that acted as a bridge between us and potential participants. Focusing on a direct-to-consumer path, we now had to discover how to build that trust ourselves.

I mapped out the various components related to “Deciding whether to join this program”, and led a walk-through test where users could freely roam. I then mapped their feedback both to the mockups and to these theorized test cases. Without prompting, the participants covered all cases, but the order through which they would perform it was different. This helped observe their behavior in a less artificial or constrained way.

The next step of this research involves co-creating assets with the caregiver community, putting forth their voices and experiences, while also carrying out research for more in-depth task-based analysis. Using the task-based profiles produced during the interviews, I will map existing goals and activities observed through interviews. With observation, task-led interviews, I will be able to populate the tasks and add to the activities and goals observed.

GitHub (Public)

Repository (Private)

My Role

• Researcher

• Copy Writer

• Functional Analyst

• UX Designer

• Project Manager