This is a project to design and build an information management system for the network of people caring for an older adult diagnosed with a life-altering disease.
We are partnering with Joy's House, a day care service for adults, to study the information needs of caregivers with the help of their in-house paper-based information management system, called Care Kit. Our goal is to improve the capabilities of the current system to ease information updating and sharing.
Our process consists of four iterative phases following Design Thinking best practice - empathize with the users/problem space exploration, ideate possible approaches, prototype solution, and test the solution with the users.
We are finishing the first phase using a series of narrative interviews with caregivers and Joy's House staff. A narrative interview is structured around the story of a significant event in an interviewee's life or social context. At the end of the interview, the interviewees perform a card sort task. They sort a deck of cards containing information from the care-kit (ex., medical information, financial information, legal information, etc.) based on their current usage and perception of the usefulness of information.
Currently, we are finishing the first phase and planning the second phase.
Project Personnel
Yamini Karanam, B.Tech
Richard J. Holden, PhD
