Read the PublicationWith early detection, 90% of cases can each be effectively treated and loss of vision would be minimal if at all, however, currently preventative care is widely undervalued. How might we create a system that can effectively overcome the barriers seniors are currently facing when seeking the proper preventative care?
I was not designing for the generalized masses. I was specifically designing for older adults, so I set out to read up on accessibility guidelines for seniors. I even played with my grandmother's iPad for an afternoon to see the types of interactions crafted for seniors. I made note of key recurring features and design patterns I found and often thought to myself - would I be able to walk my grandma through this over the phone? This simple questioning process helped me make effective decisions more efficiently.
A simple 3 step process to set up and connect with your personal eye care physician. Bold text, clear prompts with highly specified options after each input. The options were bilateral to keep things simple.
I created animations to visually guide the user and only kept two options for navigation from each screen. In this one instance, I felt that it was better not to have a 'skip' button.
The first screen from the home page (left) contained higher priority information relevant to the specific user, and the second page (right and two nodes away from home screen) had general information about their condition for easy reference.
Gentle reminders can help older adults stay on top of their image capture cycles and check-ins.
Easy as 1-2-3. Select a photo, make sure to preview it and then send it to your doctor. There was no potentially ambiguous terms like "share" or "select". If a user wanted to interact with a photo they would simply click it.
We conceptualized Seek to address all the pain points we found. Seek is portable, cost efficient and best of all, designed specifically for seniors to use. It is a high resolution tele-optometric device and paired application experience. With this experience, there would be no need to travel and wait for an appointment. Seniors could just capture and upload the images of their eyes at their own convenience, and their personal eye doctor can appraise their images and respond through the application.
I conducted 2 ethnographic studies and 6 directed interviews with older adults ranging from 65 to 82 years old. My goal was to discover exactly what obstacles this group was facing, if any. The main reasons summed up to lack of accessibility, in some cases, cost, and high inconvenience.
Insurance does not always cover the cost of medical bills and examinations - especially if they are non urgent.
Majority of seniors live outside metropolitan areas and access to doctors are far apart, making physical accessibility a pain point.
Making appointments and long wait times are the worst, and even worse for older adults.
Learning new technology is not always easy for older adults. It's important that Seek provides necessary information and visuals that guide the user in their journey.
Health is important, and our users should feel as though they are not alone on their journey for better vision care.
I want to craft an experience that makes our senior users feel in control. To provide them with full autonomy, so they can independently complete the tasks they set out to do on their own.
A thorough function analysis and morphological chart were generated to analyze the critical functions and features of the device. The goal was to create an ergonomic design with minimized buttons and toggles for optimal ease-of-use.
The final design prototype includes ergonomic design, ribbed rubber grips for enhanced stability, and obvious call to actions including a capture, light intensity and power button.
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