Autonomous Living

This project has the potential to positively impact more than 300,000 adults in Ontario living with some level of intellectual disability, along with their families, caregivers, and communities. With a focus on providing adaptive, personalized, and user-centric tools that empower users to gain more autonomy, the ALP further supports caregivers and families in a way that suits them best, creating an inclusive future for all.

Process

Discovery

Cisco Toronto Innovation Labs conducted a virtual design sprint to identify ways to improve the life of adults with disabilities living independently using smart assistive tech. 

• Sprint goal: Usable, adaptable and financially accessible technology to help support people in their homes and community

• Insight: A lot of disparate solutions exist that cater to a subset of an individual’s needs. Synergies among existing tech and data is untapped and wasted. 

• Market gap: A trusted, controlled and manageable smart infrastructure that is applicable to specialized use cases is not available from any of the larger solution providers 

• Cisco advantage: Have devices, management capabilities, trust and ability to execute a holistic strategy to provide a platform to build a solution for this use case

Goals

Desk Research

I conducted research on the existing applications, as well as the needs and common issues of technology and users. I found a wealth of resources that laid out best UI practices for neurodiverse users, which included how to appeal to dyslexia and sensory sensitivities (contrast levels, animations, and other visual cues). 

• Full intensity colours, such as red and yellow, are very simulating and are best to avoid. Soft, pastel colours (i.e. blues, greens, pinks, oranges) can be very comforting. 

• Serif fonts (tails and ticks on the end of strokes that obscure the shapes of letters) have been found less readable for a neurodiverse audience. Neurodiverse readers fare better with sans-serif fonts (simple, clean lines that are the same width throughout). Also increasing the line and character spacing can make reading and scanning text easier.

• Visual supports help bring in the structure, routine and sequence that most neurodivergent individuals require to carry on their daily activities. 

• More whitespace/real estate for content and making the buttons/icons bigger for easier tapping 

Customization is key. The ALP applications should consider the specific needs for each individual, for example, routines, details on tasks, alerts, reminders, etc. The application should have a high level of customization to better address each individual specific needs.

Interviews

Careful observation and empathetic conversations with individuals and groups are key to understanding how alerts work for and against them. Our interview questions focused on the individuals’ relationship to autism, how they navigate productivity, and how they use technology to accomplish their goals as a caretaker/educator. The team received great feedback and first-hand stories of struggles and success when dealing with technology and autism. We were fortunate to have a strong connection to the local autism community, and were able to conduct 30 min - 1 hour interviews with:

• 3 individuals with developmental disabilities (mid-high functioning Autism)

• 6 parents

• 5 caregivers (social service coordinator, behaviour analyst, clinical manager, future housing coordinator, program/staff supervisor)

Affinity Mapping

The team reviewed our notes and video footage from the interviews and was able to identify seven different categories: learning behaviours, technology dependence, schedules, dislikes, habits/passions, rewards, and apps used.

We also noticed three strong trends:

1. Keeping a schedule is key.

2. Task analysis is the most common method used in keeping a schedule and managing tasks.

3. Technology plays a vital role as an aid.

User Stories

To help the team visualize and identify the different elements of the process for individual and caregiver apps respectively, and the interrelationships among the various steps, we used the diagram flow as a graphical representation of the ecosystem.

Style Guide

Individual Mobile App Features

The Mobile App provides individuals with developmental disabilities the ability to view and track their tasks and routines, access emergency support and welfare checks, and call friends and families using Webex technology, anywhere and anytime.

Home Screen

The home screen provides users  quick and easy access to their daily routine and tasks (current, missed and completed), as well as any important event reminders. The goal was to provide a simple and clean aesthetic while providing easy-to-read and direct instructions. We also wanted to make it fun and enjoyable to increase user engagement and adoption.

Task Details

Tasks can vary in nature, as well as having different and multiple steps. To help users execute their tasks, the Mobile App will provide the ability to dive into the task's details and steps. They might include different elements, such as:

• Steps (i.e. list of steps on how to brush your teeth)

• List (i.e. list of suggested recipes; including images, text and links)

• Map (i.e. appointment at 10504 42 St SE, Calgary, AB)

• Timer (i.e. two minutes timer to brush teeth)

• Video link support (i.e. link to a youtube video on how to cook a specific recipe)

• Images (i.e. carousel with book images for suggested reading)

Schedule

To help individuals  plan their routine days/weeks in advance, they can navigate through past and future days on the calendar to view all the planned tasks.

Contacts & Webex Calling

Emergency support is provided to individuals by connecting them instantly to their custom contacts. The app will connect them with others via a high-quality and secure video call using the Cisco Webex Platform. Users can search for contacts or add their family and friends to the favourites section if they contact them often.

Calls connect instantly without any further setup. Options to switch between the front and back camera view, mute audio, and turn off the video are always shown and within easy reach. Buttons feature both an icon and label, so there is no confusion (i.e. whether the mic is muted).

Mood Tracker

Based on our SME interviews, we found it beneficial to try to identify anxiety triggers. A way users can execute that would be to rate their day on a 5-point mood scale and give them options to expand why they chose how they are feeling that way. All the information collected will be available to the Caregiver.

Triggers & Push Notifications

Some reminders are crucial in order for individuals to live independently. Triggers can be based on:

• Calendar Trigger (i.e. Alert the individual to take their medication every day at 8:00 am)

• Sensor Triggers (i.e. Alert the individual when they leave the front door open)

• Event Base Triggers (i.e. Alert the individual when a mood entry wasn't done)

• Combination of Triggers (i.e. Alert the individual when they didn't take a shower, based on the event on the calendar and water sensor data collection)

• Emergency Triggers (i.e. Alert the individual and automatically notify and call the Caregiver if the smoke alarm goes off)

Webex DeskPro

The Webex DeskPro application is just like the mobile app, but bigger! It's an intelligent collaboration device that features a 27-inches 4K display with a HD camera, superior sound system and advanced noise-cancelling microphone array. Each individual would get a DeskPro setup in their home to view their routine, track their mood and video call their friends and family.

Caregiver App Features

A Mobile App to provide caregivers and family members with the ability to manage individuals with developmental disabilities's routines, tasks, reminders and alerts.

Individual's Hub

Provides users with a quick and easy way to monitor the individuals they support based on card statuses. Green (low priority) means they are on track with their routine, orange (medium priority) means they have a couple of important notifications, and red (high priority) means they have over 5 urgent notifications and need immediate attention.

Dashboard & Routine

The dashboard is where the caregiver can view notifications and real-time task performance indicators. Caregivers can see whether the Individual is following their daily routine correctly or are missing certain tasks/alerts.

In the routines screen, caregivers  can navigate to past, current and future days to create or view all the tasks, reminders and alerts they have scheduled for the individual.

Creating Tasks (forms)

The task editor is one of the most important features on the app, since it allows users to create a task for an Individual. It includes basic information (title, helper, date and time), recurring or repeat toggle, and task detail content (i.e. steps, map or timer).

Contacts & Calling

Caregivers and family members can view a list of recent calls by tapping on the phone icon found in the menu bar. The list of recent calls will include the contact info, the time of the call and whether it is ongoing, incoming or missed. There, they can switch over to contacts and choose who they would like to call.

Web Scheduler

The goal is to increase the application usability when the user needs to create complex tasks by giving them the option to use a laptop device. The scheduler contains a day view (where the user can see all the routines of the individuals they support), and a three-day view (where they can see upcoming tasks).

Accessibility

With the goal of providing different levels of opportunities and support for each person in order to achieve fair outcomes, the mobile app will leverage native accessibility features available on both iOS and Android operating systems.

For future releases. we would like to have this list of accessibilities settings that are considered to help individuals with low vision, motor control issues, auditory-processing issues, expressive language disorder, nonverbal-communication issues, and attentional needs.

• VoiceOver (iOS) and TalkBack (Android) narrate the individual's commands, providing auditory feedback

• Invert colours (iOS) improves screen clarity with higher contrast

• Zoom (iOS) and Magnification Gestures (Android) magnify anything on the screen

• Speak Selection (iOS) lets you change the rate of speech and highlights words

• Captions (Android) offers closed captioning in different modes (speech, text, and style)

• Predictive Text (iOS) helps users by letting the device finish the sentence

Future Goals

• Speech-to-text

• Customizable home screen widgets (weather, clock, Spotify, maps, events)

• Task templates for caregivers

• AI mood tracking: behavioural insights (i.e. bobby might be cranky today)

• Sleep tracking with bed sensors

• Data capture forms for caregivers

• Expand sensors/smart devices (Siri, Google Home, Alexa)

• Caregiver shifts

• Deviations from routines 

• Biometric/movement wearables 

• Expand to Seniors (living on their own/with dementia)

  
  

Learnings

This project was a pivotal moment for me as a designer. I realized that I was only designing for someone who experienced the world like me. It opened my eyes to the endless opportunities on how to improve the quality of life for all users. I became a designer to make information accessible for all, and this project reminded me of my original goal. 

I learned that physical, cognitive, and social exclusion is the result of mismatched interactions. As designers, it’s our responsibility to know how our designs affect these interactions and create mismatches. The technology industry can intervene positively in promoting a more inclusive world if we can just listen with empathy to the needs and embrace the challenge of going beyond the obvious to solve problems.

Other tid-bits of learnings:

• Adapt your communication - every audience values something different.

• Iterate as much as you can. I restarted this project twice before finding the right solution in terms of accessibility, inclusivity and usability. 

• Focus more on hand-offs to developers. Create a solid design system and use other resources to your advantage (loom).

• Deeply understand the product you are designing. 

• It’s so important to talk about the why behind everything you create. 

• If you're presenting multiple directions, be sure to also present a preference as part of your work. 

• Design is never done -  embrace ambiguity, continue to be curious, ask insightful questions, and push for new ideas.