Memo: A Memory Rehabilitation Application — A Lean UX Approach to designing an application
Introduction to the Project
The project was done as an assignment for the subject “Interaction Design Studio” while studying Masters of Interaction Design at University of Technology Sydney (UTS).
The basis for our product is the “Making the Most of your Memory” training program, which is used across several different countries, and has been published in a dozen peer-reviewed journal articles. Created by clinical neuropsychologists Laurie Miller and Kylie Radford, this program aims to improve the lives of people affected by memory loss, often due to stroke or epilepsy. The six week program aims to teach patients a range of memory rehabilitation strategies, lifestyle considerations and psychoeducation to compensate for their memory deficits, and empower them to lead higher quality lives with greater independence. Whilst the program has had robust, clinically proven outcomes for patients of memory loss, it is nevertheless lacking in terms of accessibility and personalisation.
Our application Memo aims to improve the delivery and the accessibility of the ‘making the most of your memory’ training program through the use of technology. Our team has designed one stop solution that enables patients to complete the program from the comfort of their homes allowing them to overcome barriers that might limit patients from completing it in person. At the same time, our application aims to improve the clinician’s ability to effectively teach the program, which in turn provides a better outcome for the patient.
Total Team Members: 5
Timeframe: 12 weeks (4 sprints)
My role: UX Research (2 User Interviews, 1 Persona, Heuristic Evaluation, Affinity Diagram), UI Design (Sketches, Wireframe, Prototype)
The Process
The subject required us to follow a Lean UX approach and agile design method. But what is Lean UX and how is it different from traditional UX? Both approach has the same goal in mind that is to provide a seamless experience to its users but the way we work on the project is different. To explain in other words, unlike traditional UX, Lean UX focuses on rapid delivery of outcomes, greater level of collaboration between team members, and removing waste of time and effort by getting feedback as early as possible in the design process so that we can make quick decisions. Furthermore, tradition UX are more focused towards requirement gathering as much as possible from the early stages so that the delivered product is as detailed as possible. Lean UX is different in the matter that it ditches requirements and focuses on assumptions to create hypothesis. The assumptions may not be correct, but the idea is that assumptions can be changed during the project design process as we build a better understanding.
1. Think Phases
Problem Statement
Around 50 million people are suffering from epilepsy worldwide. Even if one gets past the seizures caused by it, the after-effects can still be seen hindering the daily activities of the patients who have recovered or are in the process of recovery. Memory issues can be commonly seen among them. Several programs are available to prove assistance with memory rehabilitation for people suffering from memory problems after epoleptic episodes. Pre-pandamic era observed these rehabilitation programs delivered in person, but the contemporary situation calls for a digitized solution to remove the roadblocks for the patients to live a healthy and confident life.
Hypothesis
Hypothesis are created in Lean UX to test our assumption. A hypothesis is created on the basis of why our product is important, who is it going to be important to, and what we expect to achieve. As the design process progresses, we collect evidence to prove that our belief is true. If we cannot find the evidence, the we improvise and change our hypothesis which might be leading us in the wrong direction.
We created two hypothesis targeting both are user base.
Patient
Improved self-efficacy for memory and greater independence can be achieved for individuals suffering from neurological conditions if patients have the ability to:
- Access rehabilitation rehabilitation remotely;
- Practice memory related exercises;
- Track memory related improvements;
Neuropsychologist
Higher quality memory rehabilitation can be delivered if neuropsychologists have the ability to:
- Deliver sessions to remote patients;
- Improve interaction with patients;
- Access quality feedback about patient progress;
Persona
We created two personas in the thinking phase. In the traditional UX approach, personas were generally created based on the interview participants. However as we were using Lean UX we had not interviewed any participants yet for rapid design process. Both personas were created based on assumptions and hypothesis. They were iterated and improvised during each sprint and only in the check phase we verified our personas with the end user.
Comparative Analysis
To ensure we had a unique and marketable product offering that would cover our user’s needs, we assessed several reference products that were relevant to our application such as Coviu, Quenza, Luminosity, MindMate etc.
We considered whether these products allowed for video conferencing (which would improve accessibility), were personalised (to improve motivation and effectiveness), dual-facing (to improve the user experience of both the patient and clinician), provided feedback on progress (to track and motivate patients) and delivered notifications or reminders (to assist patient memory).
So what makes us different from the other products? Memo provides an all-in-one, clinically proven program used internationally at well accredited hospitals, it is accessible to patients regardless of geographical, physical or familial barriers, with dual facing video conferencing software for the clinician and the patient, specially designed memory exercises to help patients practice memory strategies taught in the program. It also updates patients and clinicians on progress, and prompts patients to remember to attend sessions, perform exercise, and complete homework.
2. Make Phases
Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
We are aiming to cutting waste and minimize our work in Lean UX. Hence we aimed to create a smallest end product with only a list of working features that could be used to test the validity of our hypothesis. We decided to create an MVP with 4 features to quickly and cheaply test whether our product is worth investing time and money in the early stage of our design process.
Sketches
As we moved forward in the make phase, we started to create sketches to lay down the ideas on how the interface of the key features of the application might look like. Sketching allowed us to communicate design idea between team members and iterate upon multiple ideas before settling on one. Team members sat together and drew multiple sketches demonstrating how features can be implemented in our application.
Wireframe
Wireframes are useful in the early stages of the development process to brainstorm and establish the structure of the application before the visual design and content is added. The team got together to draw wireframes focusing on the features of the application. The wireframes focused on the core feature sets of the application such as offered courses, memory games, goal setting, notifications etc.
Prototype
After settling on the design decision we made using the wireframes, our team started creating a high-fidelity prototype along with interactions using Figma. The high-fidelity prototype was used to communicate our design idea to our users and tutors. It was also used to perform user testing. You can see a few snaps of the prototype here or follow the link below to test out the prototype.
3. Check Phase
Expert Interviews / Usability Testing
A total of 10 neuropsychologists were interviewed for the purpose of gathering data for the project. 4 of them were already involved in the “Making the most out of your Memory” program while 6 of them were novel to the project. Unfortunately actually patients could not be interviewed due to privacy and ethics approval reasons. However, the neuropsychologists we interviewed were asked to provide relevant information and evaluate our hypothesis on the behalf of the patients.
Heuristic Evaluation
We asked our interview participants to use the prototype we had designed to conduct usability testing by using the 10 heuristic evaluation principles created by NN Group and finding usability problems in our design. Each participant were asked to complete 4 scenarios in the application. The evaluator closely followed the interactions of the participants in each page and evaluated it using the 10 usability heuristics. We acknowledged what went well and utilised them more in the next sprint whereas improved upon the negative points. Below is a sample of 1 of the 4 scenarios of our heuristic evaluation.
Affinity Diagram and Interview Findings
After the individual interviews, our team worked together to create an affinity diagram. The use of the affinity diagram made it easier for us to bring together all of our findings; sort, extract, and display data to get a holistic picture of these findings. As we had never met or interviewed the actual end users until this stage, the group was curious on what type of findings the interviews would reveal. Here are the findings based on our interviews and affinity diagram:
- Features: Pre-session videos should consist of short animated videos which are segmented and easy to follow. Lifestyle and motivational factors should be considered when implementing this.
- Accessibility: Program should consider social barriers to engaging with people online and thus give people the ability to turn their camera off. Also, due to poor internet in some areas the program should have an offline mode.
- Reminders:Reminders should either be automated phone calls or SMS messages for prompting homework. The frequency at which these prompts should be delivered will depend on the severity of memory loss (i.e., more severe memory loss will require frequent notifications).
- Technology:The program should aim to emulate the simplicity of Zoom type interfaces to overcome limitations of technological literacy. Furthermore, the program should include features that allow neuropsychologists to support patients who need troubleshooting with tech issues.
- Social Interaction:The program should aim to include much more social interaction and peer support by allowing patients the opportunity to familiarise themselves with one another and share experiences, perhaps through ice breakers and break out discussion rooms.
- Persona:Patient persona should be updated to include how far they live from a clinic to reflect accessibility issues, while injuries should include stroke, epilepsy and head injury. Neuropsychologist persona age should range between 40–50, and may be updated to include their involvement in the creation of the program.
- Dashboard: Dashboard for clinicians should allow them to see patient diagnosis, clinical history, age, contact details, and progress. Furthermore, progress tracking displays should be visually pleasing graphs and figures that allow easy interpretation of feedback. Lastly, feedback should show patients their individual progress to increase motivation.
- Patient Engagement: Program should aim to increase motivation and engagement by incorporating conversation and questions, more interaction among patients, and mitigating external distractions. Furthermore, improvements should be visibly shown to patients as they make progress, although comparisons of patient performance should be avoided (patients only).
- Design Considerations: Exercises should be tailored to individuals based on severity, segments should be shorter to accommodate co-morbid attentional issues, simple visual designs should be prioritized over text, items should be large and easy to click to overcome co-morbid motor deficits, layout should be simple to overcome general comorbid cognitive issues.
Final Presentation
At the end of the subject we created a presentation summarising the entire journey of our application design process.
Summary
Lean UX is a marvellous technique and approach to the UX process which focuses more on the outcome of the experience being designed and not the final deliverable. It also propels team to work more collaboratively which eventually results in a quicker decision-making process.
While the traditional UX approach is to set thorough and detailed requirements and goals from the beginning of the project, I found Lean UX to be more flexible, experimental and adaptive to changes that allow continious delivery. I felt that Lean UX is useful to get the work done faster by having less focus on deliverables and documentation and more focus on designing the actual experience.
