How I created a startup’s product to reflect user’s needs and business goals.
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UX researcher
UX/UI designer
Figma
Miro
Lark
May 2023 -
July 2023
(3 months)
Wireframes
User Experience
User Interface
PALM Care Technologies is an early stage senior care tech startup based in Boston, MA. They are creating hardware + software caregiving solutions for Dementia patients and families. During my internship, I worked closely with them to plan, design, and establish their branding and mobile app.
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The goal to create high-fidelity interactive prototypes for our engineering teams, leading to first round of user testing. However, we face constraints: a limited budget and tight timeline. The challenge is to design a cost-effective, timely, and user-friendly mobile app that aligns with our business objectives.
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Upon joining, I caught up with the project by evaluating 25 interviews with family members of dementia seniors, and learning 3 main challenges they face and corresponding solutions PALM has came up with.
Safety Concerns
60% of dementia seniors wander off at some point.
Communication Barriers
Senior’s struggle to communicate often lead to treatment delays.
Coordination Challenges
Hard to align multiple caregivers/ family on care decisions.
Before jumping right into design, I want to better understand the target user and prioritize user flow, so I created two personas, Debbie and Simon, with my team from 25 interviews.
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Design Decision
The primary and secondary user personas help me prioritize user flow, where geo-fencing and behavior tracking are the main features, and collaborative care is the secondary feature.
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To guide my design, I studied competitors like Boundary Care, Oura Ring, Jiobit, and Fi to understand user engagement and how these brands prioritize user flows, building on the insights from our personas.
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My main takeaways:
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From the insights I learned from personas and competitive analysis, I led a design workshop with stakeholders to define the site map and onboarding user flow of PALM mobile app.
Major design decisions
Geo-fencing as home page
Location tracking + alert can generate most value for users.
WHY: Safety is the primary concern for primary user persona
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2 clicks max each feature
User now can find any information in 2 steps or less
WHY: User flows with fewer steps improve accessibility.
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Simplify onboarding/ setup
Onboard app in 3 modules and less than 10 steps
WHY: Learnable, memorable, and require less cognitive power
But also more importantly...
Business WHY: Simpler user flow is more technically feasible, cost-effective, and saves design and development time.
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Feature key screens
Geo-fencing
Behavior tracking
Collaborative Care
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I designed PALM for easy onboarding, reducing friction and ensuring a positive initial experience to promote continued engagement.
Unlike PALM's competitor Boundary Care, my design emphasizes a clear visual hierarchy, enabling users to efficiently access vital information in just one glance.
By minimizing pages and steps, I enhance the user experience and simplify the development process. A balanced approach for users and developers alike
I designed a professional and welcoming interface that strikes a balance between professional and compassionate. The interface prominently features a soft baby blue color, which aligns with the brand's identity and conveys a sense of trust and warmth.
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Comparing the final design with stakeholders' initial design plan, my final design...
reduce development time and cost by
steps shorter during the onboarding experience
shorter on accessing weekly behavioral tracking report
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After consulting with stakeholders, I compiled a design document outlining the app's site map, user flow, and feature guidelines, which was then handed off to the engineering team.
The goal for PALM is to build the app between September and October, followed by testing the initial prototype in November at a Boston-based senior care facility, using hardware wearables on 20 participants for a month.
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