About Bay Alarm Medical
Bay Alarm Medical America’s #1 rated medical alert system. With just a push of a button, Bay Alarm Medical’s trained 24/7 emergency operators will be there to contact family, friends, neighbors, and if necessary, your local 911 emergency services.
Project Summary
OVERVIEW
Duration: 4 Week | Team: 3 people | My Role: Ux Researcher and Designer | Tool: Sketch, Invision
BRIEF
Bay alarm medical is looking to extend the utility of their product for subscribing users and improve the experience for everyone involved.They are assuming that this involves some sort of digital solution
PROBLEM
Bay Alarm Medical is a medical alert system that provides seniors with alert devices. When a senior uses the device, the company has to inefficiently call family members one-by-one.
SOLUTION
An app for family members that instantly informs them of emergencies. Giving real time notification to all the members.
This app improves the communication loop between caregivers, patient, and emergency responders, which eventually reduces caregivers stress and help caregivers to make the quick, informed decision by timely access to critical information during crucial times.
Design Process
Reseach
Heuristic Analysis
To understand Business model and current customer experience
Competitive & Comparative analysis
To learn about others who are in same business
Survey and In-depth interviews
To test our initial hypothesis and learn more about caregivers, their feelings, motivation, behaviour.
Why we choose caregiver as part of research for this project?
Caregivers are decision makers
The elderly users of the service are typically not paying for their own subscription to the service. Medical alert system providers target their marketing towards the adult children of the elderly, who are usually paying for the service on behalf of their parents.
Extending and enhancing Caregivers experience is the greatest opportunity with the least cost and change to the existing model.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
We looked at Life Alert and Lively, two strong competitors, to find each company’s competitive advantage. Both already had apps out, which leads us to believe that Bay Alarm is not competitive enough in today's market.
USER RESEARCH
After our investigation, we created a survey and sent it out to people who may be familiar with medical alert systems. Our goal was to learn about their experiences, wants, and needs in order to better understand the problem and craft the solution.
Key Survey Findings
- Caregivers who decides to get bay alarm medical services for the loved one gets information about pressing the emergency button only through a phone call.
- 66.7% people said they check about the person daily, that means they are extremely concerned all the time.
- Most of the user have more than 3 caregivers, so Bay alarm calls them one by one if there is emergency.
Key Interview Findings
- Primary caregivers need to share and communicate with other people
- There is a wide range in caregiver responsibilities and level of involvement
- Caregivers often struggle with their loved-one’s willingness and/or ability to cooperate with care
- Many caregivers find phone calls inconvenient, for a wide variety of reasons
- Caregivers often become deeply involved because they don’t find professional caretakers or medical systems reliable
Few Statements of Caregivers
"Family wasn’t notified about hospital transfer until 9 hours after. Nobody knew who she was for 3 hour”
-Chelsea McDonald
“Its was difficult to write all the correct information on call if there is emergency call ”
-Susan Warby
JOURNEY MAP
Mapped out the current journey of caregiver who are planning to buy the service for senior till the end of using the service.
Key Findings :
Found out that all the low points in the map is due to lack of information and communication.
ARCHETYPE/PERSONA
After doing User research we came up with the typical groups involved in this scenario and created 2 archetypes:
Design
DESIGN STUDIO
Brainstormed potential features and drafted sketches for our user interfaces. We did this fast and early to let our ideas flow freely without too many constraints.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
This led us create the lo-fi wireframes which we tested with multiple users and then finally made the hi-fi mockups.
Final Prototype
RESULT
I shared our final prototype with the participants from our user survey to gather some quick qualitative feedback. The solution resonated with the target market and addressed their needs:
“I wish I had the app last year it would have been of great help for my family. We would have used it last year with my grandad.” -Amanda Miller.
NEXT STEPS
Based on our user research, the physical device was the most significant pain point for the elderly. There is reluctance to use the devices. I would design the wearable device to be more appealing and take advantage of modern wearable technology.