Creating the interface (app and a desktop dashboard) for a product that helps Alzheimer patients.
7 minutes read
Aloys is a dosing system that helps mild Alzheimer's patients adhere to their treatments. It was designed for the final project of Nico and Albert, two engineering students of product design and industrial development. Although the product does not have a screen, the main idea was that it could be connected through an application, and that is why they contacted me.
The functions of the Aloys and its design were clear, but the engineers wanted it to be linked to technological products such as phones and computers so that its function could be improved.
The engineers wanted to be able to graphically present a solution that would help them explain the integration of Aloys with online applications in their thesis. To do that, I needed to build part of the interface.
One of the limitations was time, I had only 2 weeks to help them with the interface. In addition, I could not dedicate 100% of my day so I had to use the time optimally. Because they had done a lot of research and knew the environment of the product, I dared to help them. The application had to be very intuitive so that elderly people could use the application.
I was responsible for planning the different tasks and meetings that had to take place for me to achieve the result. They would help me in everything necessary and attend the meetings I assigned. Although most of the work was done by me, I couldn't have done the work without their help.
First I had to plan the tasks so that the product was a success. Because I was short on time, I decided to focus on a few common practices that would give great results. I divided the process into:
1. Define the audience
2. Define functionalities
3. Define the structure
4. Interface design
The Aloys user was clear. It was an elderly person suffering from mild Alzheimer's. But the user of the applications that were linked to Aloys did not coincide with the user of it, so the first task was to define which users would use the digital solutions.
After discussing it with the engineers who had done a previous analysis, we defined 2 users related to Aloys:
1. Relatives of the patient
2. Patient's doctor
Once we knew the profile of the possible users of the digital solutions associated with Aloys, I created the user persona with the main characteristics to make a design centered on that user.
Once we knew the user to whom the product was addressed, we had to know what functions the product should have. For this we create user stories for each user:
Once we had the user stories, we each made a crazy 8 to see how we wanted to show the information on a screen (and what type of screen would best suit each product).
We shared ideas and voted on the different solutions. We concluded that the solution for the patient's family member would be an app while the solution for the doctor would be a dashboard on the computer.
To know how the structure of the product was going to be, I made two sitemaps around the user stories.
Once I knew the structure, we made the wireframes together in very low fidelity so that I could get started with the design.
Once I had all the information, I defined the graphic line with the colors we would use, the typography and the icons.
From here I started designing the screens. We decided that it would do all the screens of the app while in the dashboard only the main screen and the patient's profile were necessary.
This was the end result:
Although it was a quick project and I had little time, this project taught me what it is like to work with people from other departments and how to manage timings when time is tight. With the screens, the engineering students were able to present their project successfully, showing how the app and the dashboard would be.
