Retrace

Empathize with users

Starting this project, none of us had a good grasp of dementia. To learn more we took a three step approach consulting different sources to understand the reality of people with and around dementia.

Research (papers - statistics - literature)

Firstly, we took to literature to learn about the fundamentals surrounding dementia. There is a plethora of organisations trying to educate people about the disease, often telling differing and sometimes conflicting information.
Dementia is an umbrella term for many diseases, all with different causes, symptoms and effects. We tried to focus our efforts on Alzheimer's disease, the most common cause for dementia with 60 to 80 percent of all cases.

Interviews (relatives - caregiver)

With our acquired knowledge we talked with people working with dementia.
One is a nurse working in a retirement home. According to her, most seniors living there have some stage of dementia. She described a range of effects dementia can have on people and how caregivers learn to adapt to their patients wants and needs. We would go on and consult her again in different stages of this project.
Other people were relatives of dementia patient. They described the everyday struggle and mental strain connected to having a relative with dementia. These stories helped humanize these people and gave ample inspiration for Retrace.

[The patients] sit in front of the prepared sandwich they made themselves and don't know how to put it into their mouth.

~ Quote from the nurse we interviewed (translated from German)

Expert opinion

The finishing touch to our research was a presentation by a representative of the "Alzheimer Gesellschaft Ingolstadt" (Alzheimers' association Ingolstadt), Mrs. Stampfer. She confirmed many facts we read and heard about before, but also gave insights into ways to deal with dementia as a caregiver and relative. We learned best practices and common pitfalls we later implemented into the final product.

Concept

Using our research we developed multiple concepts we could peruse going forward. We decided on a tracking system for three key reasons:

1. Not just digital, not just physical

   Retrace has both a physical and digital interface. The module itself focused on digital application but according to our research, physical interfaces would be more accessible to older people for a variety of reasons.

2. Uncommon concept

   Our course had over 20 teams working on the central theme of supporting people with dementia. Some ideas are bound to be similar. We continuously choose a concept that was out of the ordinary to not (unintentionally) copy ideas or spark any form of competition.

3. United Vision

   As a group we need a united understanding of our central concept, its use cases and strengths. Most of that comes down to feeling. It was clear early that we were most passionate about Retrace out of all our ideas.

Business Problem

We found out that people with dementia often misplace items. Connected to that is the tendency in some patients to hide important or trivial items from those around them. We want to expand on existing tracking systems in multiple ways. The first is by making the trackers work like pagers when activated, aiding in the search of nearby items. The second is giving dementia patients a physical interface through haptic buttons, since their often struggle with digital mediums.

Personas

We created a total of 6 personas to better understand the wants and needs of different users. Using their perspective we gathered our initial requirements for Retrace.

Ideate

User Journeys

We created two User Journeys for our two primary users: a patient and a nurse.

Wireframes

With our list of features we created two Wireframe systems, one for privat users, one for institutions. The main difference is that institutions need to keep track of multiple patients, each with their own system of items. Privat user only have one patient and therefore do not need an overview of patient profiles.

Paper Prototype

Using our Wireframes we created a first Paper Prototype to test the navigation between, arrangement of and interaction with elements on different screens.

Some feedback we got through testing was:

1. The registration process is too complex for one screen. We ended up with a three-step registration process that changes based on if the user is an institution or a privat user.

2. Items were originally represented by icons. Most testers agreed pictures would be more intuitive.

3. For context: Most screens have a larger button on the bottom for various purposes. Sometimes there would be a second one next to it, changing the buttons size and location. For the sake of continuity the button should now be in the same location on every screen and secondary buttons would be located elsewhere.

4. Detail screens for individual items were unintuitive and incomplete. For example, a user could activate or deactivate the tag remotely only through a dropdown menu.

Digital Prototype

We implemented the feedback into our first clickable prototype in Figma. This prototype went into a second round of testing.

We got some more feedback this time around. For example, the Home Screen did not feel like such. We needed to distinguish it further from other screens. In addition, most people wanted to edit the location of an item on the physical board through the item detail screen, a feature we later added. We also overlooked entire functions. To name one: While user created an account at the registration, there was no way to edit this account or log out.