Summary

This is a collaborative home care system for young carers whose family members have dementia, to encourage and help them involved in the care routine of people with dementia. The support from the younger carers could let their family realise they could become a team and face the disease together with everyone in their family. Nobody should face the disease by themselves.

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Project type: Personal project | Tools: Figma & Sketch

Delivierable: Service Design Proposal & Prototype

What is dementia?

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“Dementia is a syndrome due to disease of the brain, usually of a chronic or progressive nature, in which there is disturbance of multiple cortical functions, calculation, learning capacity, language and judgement. Consciousness is not clouded. Impairments of cognitive function are commonly accompanied, and occasionally preceded by, deterioration in emotional control, social behaviour or motivation.” —World Health Organization

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Dementia and informal care

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Personalized care planning and multi-dimensional support to give people with dementia the best possible quality of life at home and to delay deterioration are the best help available at this stage. In the existing programmes, because of the nature of dementia, each person's symptoms may be different, so a "person-centred planning process and be outcomes-focused"(Post-Diagnostic Support Dementia | Agency for Integrated Care, 2022) are key principles. The personalized service allows the family to better understand the condition and the changes in people with dementia, thus allowing the patient to live a more independent and dignified life. A flexible support plan, with multiple approaches, is a win-win situation for both the care and people with dementia.

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However, in the current situation, most families are reluctant to ask for professional help or wait for a long time to get help, and they use inappropriate care that makes the whole care process more stressful than it should be, it can even lead to psychological disorders in the care. The impact of not having access to the right model of family care is far greater than one might think.

Primary Research & Desk Research

Who am I Designing for?

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Challenges

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Design a personalized collaborative home care system for increasing the quality of life of people with dementia by encouraging young carers to participate more in the routine.

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Solution Ideation

The essential and valuable tools I always use in my project are called "crazy 8's" from the Design sprint. It always is the first methodology I use when I want to clear all my ideas in my mind and illustrate them on paper. After I drew down all my thoughts, I could see what needs I hadn't covered and if I could combine any solutions. In the meantime, the other reason I love this method is that I can quickly explain my idea with a rough sketch and receive feedback from my colleagues or target groups. Making the solution become landing as a tool for communication easily is one of the main reasons I like to use the method.

The paper prototype is another essential tool to help me show my solution idea in the real world. It is roughly made but could help me to modify it whenever I thought something new and use the prototype to test with the users. I iterated my solution using the prototype, and they could also help me present the whole solution proposal to people.

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Final Solution

In the system, carers will use an online personalized survey to create the task cube for people with dementia by their symptoms. As long as the toolkits delverlived in their home, they could set up the boards and networks, easy steps such as scanning the QR code on the record board and everybody could access the special task list. Then when the main carers provide care to their parents, they could just press the dots on the record boards to record what tasks people with dementia do. Younger carers could check the records remotely and be aware of what they should do when they take the job from their parents.

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Live With Dementia - Board Generator

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The easily personalised board generator

Users could use an easy and fast online survey to create a personalised recorded board base on their actual situation and needs. It will include the basic information of care routine and what they want to get help from other people. The record board creation is essential to the whole service system, and people can always change their board.

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The main sections are:

· The relationship with people with dementia.
· Recently carers numbers.
· Real routine records and the tasks.
· Personal and payment information.

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Check the interactive prototype here :)

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Live With Dementia App

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1. Adding board & recording

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Simply recording data and adding a record board

After the users receive the board, they can add it to their profile by scanning the QR code on the board. Meanwhile, the system will update the data in real-time, and people also can modify the data if they want to correct some parts. All the data sections will base on their personalized record board.

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Check the interactive APP prototype here :)

2. Adding Task and finish task

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Submit and finish tasks

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One important feature is the task function. Any members could publish the tasks that need to be done while caring for people with dementia. The tasks are based on the selections that they made before, but they could always add more task cubes by using the generator or app. Any family member who decided to finish the job could mark the task with one click and check it after they finished. Everybody else will know the current situation.

3. Adding family in to carer team

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Build the family care

Caring is not one person's job but the job of the whole family.Adding family members is easy; you only need to tap them, and we can share the data and tasks with them. You could also have chats through the app, encouraging more communication between families.

Live With Dementia - Board

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Record board

The record board has built-in chips and sensors, and all the movements of the parts will update the system in real-time. The concept of the board is to let the primary carers record the routine quickly. It saves the steps of 'finding their phones" and "opening the app" and record what they did do. They could put the board in any scene that is easy to touch and record. The colours of the tasks are different and are for accessibility consideration. Some carers who are the partners of people with dementia can recognise each of them quickly.

There are three main parts of the record board. The routine record part will be the same as the app interface since they are all personalised made; the task area is for announcing the tasks to other family members by the primary carer, they only need to put the 'task cube' in any blocks, and there will be task announcement on the app; The storage area is the to store the task cube that didn't be used for now.

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Expacted Impact

This products will bring more impact. In the small family, people could notice the support from each other, and bring more care to people with dementia, since all of them could have the knowledge about what they should do. Starting from a family, the whole community could try the collabrative care system in different scenarios, and make it dementia friendly. More communities become dementia friendly less stigima will be existed in the society, becuase everybody could openly talk about dementia, and they could feel the support from others and even strangers.

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A little bit more :)