Life Circle (now called Violet) is a not-for-profit that can assist with the emotional aspects of caring for someone in the last stages of their life, with one-on-one support over the phone and online resources. Life Circle were interested in how they could improve their digital communication with caregivers looking after a loved one in aged care.

My role

Part of a team of 2 UX designers, taking the lead in the following activities:

conducting half of user interviews
development of user personas
heuristic evaluation of the existing website
collaborative effort to develop and test our prototypes using Figma

The problem

The number of Australians in aged care is increasing exponentially, meaning the responsibility of caregiving is impacting the lives of more Australians each year.

Research

Talking to caregivers was the number one priority for us in kicking off this project. Here is a breakdown of who we spoke to:

3 caregivers who cared for a loved one in some capacity at the end of their life
11 of them had parents who had moved into residential aged care
6 of the participants worked in the health care or aged care sectors

Synthesis and insights

After synthesis and affinity mapping all of our findings, we uncovered the following insights:

Navigating the aged care system was too complex

Aged care centres were incredibly understaffed, leading to communication breakdowns between patient, carer and families

Family dynamics have a big impact on the caregivers emotional wellbeing

Caregivers often felt judgement from siblings who were less involved in the process, or even a greater sense of responsibility to coordinate all the communication between family members

Difficult conversations with loved ones

Some caregivers felt confident around end-of-life planning, whereas others hadn’t had deep conversations with there loved one about it
For some who never had the conversations, when the end-of-life came, they felt it was sudden and they were not prepared

Lack of understanding about dementia

Many caregivers had loved ones impacted by dementia, but knew very little about it

A lack of awareness of the support services available

It can be overwhelming to try and find the right support and resources - there is so much out there

Understanding users

Our primary persona developed from research is Karen, who cares for her father who has advanced dementia. Because she works in healthcare, she feels comfortable advocating for her Dad’s care decisions. She is estranged from her extended family due to disagreements over the care of her father and finances, so she feels like she is caregiving alone sometimes. She often needs emotional support with caregiving, and has sought this out through online resources and face to face counselling (but has never used Life Circle). She would like an online forum to vent, and needs to know what resources are available to her to understand more about dementia.

We also have Steph, who works full time as well as looking after her Mum, who is physically disabled and lives in residential aged care. She coordinates care with her sister, who she gets along well with, but sometimes it can be a struggle to relay all the information around Mum’s needs, and coordinating visits. She struggles sometimes with a lack of communication from aged care staff, so needs to know the right questions to ask. Steph also has a visual impairment so needs digital services to be accessible to feel more confident using them.

User testing

To test out our ideas of what digital content to server caregivers, we wanted to compare our initial wireframes against the current website. We tested with 5 people to understand what worked well and what needed to be improved. This is what we found:

Test A (current site)

Found copy was too long and hard to digest
Image did not resonate with the users
Content focused on the problem rather the solution & help from LifeCircle
Some people thought it was a site about an aged care home

Test B (new prototype)

Found copy was to long and hard to digest
Image did not resonate with the users
Content focused on the problem rather the solution & help from LifeCircle
Some people thought it was a site about an aged care home

Final design

We factored in all of our research and insights to develop a new homepage layout for Life Circle, as well as key pieces of relevant content for caregivers.

Conclusions

Deepening relationships

The key to broadening Life Circle’s engagement with caregivers is finding opportunities to deepen their relationships with GP’s and other clinicians. Our research shows that most families rely on guidance from a GP to feel more comfortable with the moved to aged care for a loved one.

Reflect the caregiver's mental model

Putting caregiver’s questions first when creating digital content is critical. LifeCircle may not be able to provide guidance on medical topics such as dementia, however they should signpost to other relevant services in a way that fits the caregiver’s mental model.

Inclusive design

Ensuring that LifeCircles site is critical to meeting the needs of the caregiver community. Over 13 million Australians have one or more long-term eye conditions. In 2017–18, long-term vision disorders affected 93% of people aged 55 and over, which is a key demographic for caregivers with loved ones in aged care.

LifeCircle - A digital support hub for caregivers