Build the Crew

A mobile chat application built for keeping your elderly loved ones safe and independent

Who is Build the Crew?

Caring for an aging parent or family member with a disability can be extensive in scope, intensity and duration. Family members must find and negotiate with service providers, navigate the healthcare system, and work with family and friends to enlist and mobilize support. It’s time-consuming and stressful, especially when a family member is trying to provide care from afar.
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The team at B the Crew set out to find a solution to caring for loved ones at a distance. They had carried out some research, but it was time to cast a larger net and to start iterating on what the app's main features could be and how they might integrate into the the chat application.

My Contributions

User Research, User Interface, User Experience

My Role

Sole UX Designer

Platform Details

IOS Application

The Team

Brent O'Malley & Eric Cussen - Product owners

Project Status

Available for download

Project Type

Freelance Contract

The Problem

Children can't care for their elderly LO at a distance.

We all want to be included as the needs of our loved ones change from one of care giving to care-getting, but that isn't always possible when we have families of our own.

Communication between loved ones can get complicated, contentious and overlooked, but with an all-in-one solution to keeping track of schedules, storing information and checking up on how our LO is doing, those relationship tensions can be eased. There isn't one solution out there that does it all, but B the Crew is iterating on what that solution might be.

The Caregiver

Problem Deep Discovery

User Interviews

Stakeholder Interviews

User Survey

Comparative Research

The app's originators, Brent and Eric, shared with me the personal origins of how and why they wanted an app to connect loved ones caring for an elderly person. We discussed their current application in development as well as what they saw for the B the Crew app going forward.

I then set out to further understand the market and the potential users to understand how they currently cared for their loved one.

Context Discovery Survey

Understanding Context & Further insight.
I created a survey, which I posted on various forums dedicated to those caring for loved ones. This survey contained questions regarding who cares for their LO, how do the currently communicate with those caregivers and what do they communicate about.

Survey Insights

77%

of caregivers organize household care, medical care and meal prep for their LO on a daily basis

80%

of caregivers worry about both their loved one's and their own mental health.

42%

of caregivers want a better way to know how their loved one is doing.

User Interviews to Dive Deeper

First hand accounts of people caring for their Loved One.
I interviewed 10 people of varying economic backgrounds who are currently a caregiver of an aging relative or sibling with disabilities, sourced from my survey and the forums I posted in.
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I found that there were several key concerns that these individuals had about their current caregiving situation:
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How can we get our loved one the material things they need if we are not there?
Someone other than our loved one needs to be accountable for planning
How can we know how they are doing if we aren't there?

Interview Insights

Getting them what they need.
Getting their LO what they needed was a challenge because they personally did not have the mobility anymore to go out and get those things on their own.
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“We wanted to be able to get her what she needed so that she would be comfortable. We had to find ways of organizing hair appointments, doctors visits, getting her clothes that she needed. It was a lot to organize”

A central location for scheduling.
Helping organize everyone involved in care in one calendar felt like a struggle.
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“I have my work calendar, my kid's calendar and then having to worry about my sister's stuff is just a lot. I want a way to have it all in one place”

Status updates from caregivers.
Not all loved ones can be there 24/7 and those who aren’t still want to know how they are.
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“ It would have been nice to hear from her nurses that she had a bad day or that she wasn’t feeling well so that I wasn’t surprised by her situation when I got there”

Prioritization

What it is, isn't and will be

Feature Prioritization

Matrices

Collaboration

After the survey, interviews and additional competitive analysis I presented my findings and recommendations in a document that outlined what the application could be. It was exciting to hear all of the feedback and to proceed onto the next stage of feature prioritization.

Feature Prioritization for the MVP

What will the application be?
I set out to establish a list of features that we would prioritize within the MVP application. This included prioritizing the overall implementation complexity, the value to the user and how often it would be used. Supported by the research done, the product owners and I started to establish which key features would be part of the MVP application.

Event Scheduling
Caregiver Feedback
Task Creation

Creating the MVP

Design Iteration & Developing

Wireframing

Wireflows

High-Fidelity Prototyping

After prioritizing the different features, I set out to to work on creating the different wireflows and creating an MVP prototype. We used the existing design system and began to implement and further establish design concepts.

Finding the Flow

Establishing MVP Wireflows.
We identified the main flows that we would need for the MVP and I worked on creating those. (See Photo Above for some flows)

1. Onboarding Primary

2. Onboarding Secondary

3. Creating Feedback on Love One

4. Scheduling event for Loved One

5. Assigning tasks

Prototyping

Creating the MVP for Design and Development.
Once I had the main wireflows together we began to standardize interaction design and created a prototype that worked within a narrative.

Testing & Continuing the Feedback Loop

Creating an open communication channel.
Next we started to plan out how we might start to test these mockups with users. These future conversations would include usability testing by giving users specific tasks to see if our mockups complied with their mental models of how design would work. We also started to create a feedback survey where we would gather qualitative feedback from our beta testers.