Project Summary

The Centre for Elder Research(CER) contracted me to conduct academic and user research for one of Tyze’s products. Tyze Networks is a healthcare SaaS company partnered with the CER to research the caregiving industry in Canada. I researched using the User Centered Design methodology to support unlocking new insights that benefit academic research and their industry partner product.

Timeline & Team

9 months with a 5 people fully remote team.

Responsibilities

Qualitative research
Primary and secondary research
Graphic design

Deliverables

Designed databases, reports, and the first version of the research paper.

Process

Over nine months, I finished the research remotely and collaborated closely with stakeholders to draft a report recommending new product features for their business.

My contribution involved filling research gaps, market research and creating data visualization graphics.

This is just a visual of my research process, to avoid sharing personal information about my participants I will reference my research and how it impacted my process as I show my design process.

Unpaid Caregivers
People that offer care to a person in their social circle without being compensated for their time or service.
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Sample questions asked:

Would a dedicated application help you?
What is your age?
What are your duties as a caregiver?

Paid Caregivers
Caregivers get paid by a company or organization to help families care for a family member.
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Sample questions asked:

Does your organization interact with unpaid caregivers?
What is your view on unpaid caregivers?
Does your company require unpaid caregivers to be present when making care decisions?

My contribution involved filling research gaps, market research and creating data visualization graphics.

The purpose of the surveys was to quickly collect data from a large sample of individuals. We gathered responses from over 200 caregivers, including both surveys. Another goal was to recruit people interested in the project for in-depth interviews.

Some of the questions we asked during the interviews:

How would you rate your comfort level with technology?
How did you become a caregiver?
In your opinion what would make shared family decision-making easier?
Would a dedicated application help you manage the care team?

The interview helped us understand caregiving best practices and limitations. It also allowed us to learn more about people’s situations and what caregivers need to make their job easier → communicate our user needs to stakeholders.

I focused on sharing the transcripts and breaking down the data into codes to facilitate research analysis.
I used the following methods to organize and synthesize the data gathered.

This is just a visual of my research process, to avoid sharing personal information about my participants I will reference my research and how it impacted my process as I show my design process.

I organized all the survey results and plugged them into MURAL to help stakeholders visualize the data and survey insights. MURAL allowed adding visuals(graphs, charts) that made sharing and collaborating more dynamic and transparent.

Some of the survey data:

Communicating with healthcare and other professionals was ranked as the number one challenge for the survey participants
A total of 66% of unpaid caregivers reported that they provided non-healthcare-related support to the care recipient
Over 70% of the respondents stated a dedicated application would help them manage all or most of the care coordination

Numbers come from the report published by the CER.

Alongside another researcher, we grouped the themes found during the interviews. The job was to dissect the interviews and help senior researchers and stakeholders that didn’t have the time to watch and analyze them keep up with the project.

Some of the themes involve:

Carrying out the numerous responsibilities of providing care often significantly impacts the unpaid caregivers' well-being and self-care.

We used the Venn diagram with another researcher and mapped the relationship between the three themes found. We used this method to find the central insight of the interview. This insight would be used to draft the report and help Tyze Networks discover new product recommendations for their products.

You can check the official report published on the CER website. The results of this research:
Some of the themes involve:

Implementing a formal mechanism to communicate and coordinate care with healthcare and service organizations can relieve many of the challenges informal caregivers face. For these providers, caregivers can provide invaluable timely information and facilitate the coordination of care services.

→ Tyze will use this information to develop their next-generation application and convey its benefits to potential clients.