Lumi
Product Design, Service Design
Facilitating the internal and external communication between care team and patients
Duration
10 weeks
Role
Team Lead,
User Researcher,
UX Designer
Tools
Figma,
FigJam,
Procreate
Adobe AI
​
Background
As a socialization volunteer at Radiant, a hospice organization based in San Diego, I conducted weekly on-site volunteer work at my responsible facilities. In the process, I gained depth into the philosophy of hospice care and observed some existing issues people confront with hospice inside and outside the system. I decided to research into the problems and initiate a product/service design project to facilitate the care process and improve the hospice ecosystem.
What is hospice?
Definition
A philosophy of care for people with an anticipated life expectancy of 6 months or less. When cure isn’t an option, patients can transfer into hospice care through Medicare coverage or most health insurances. At hospice homes or facilities, the patient receives care with a focus in symptom management and quality of life.
An interdisciplinary team (IDT) of care members is trained to address physical, psychological, and spiritual needs of the patient and also support family members.
Problems
Hospice care confronts two sides, the External (outside world), and Internal (inside the team). Volunteers serve as the middle person between the two sides.
Problems exist in each sides as exemplified below:
All three sides of hospice seem to surround one problem: communication.
Field Research
To understand hospice care in the physical context, I conducted field research at one of the assisted living facilities.
Upon entrance, volunteers and other visitors/workers sign in at the check-in binder. Records are very messy and out of order (right).
Public spaces decorated per events. Patients can come out of bedrooms with caregivers’help and stay in the living/dining room.
In patient rooms, volunteers and other workers need to sign in the patient’s binders, which are messy as well (middle). Patient family checks the binders for updated information about the patient. In one instance, a spouse was trying to look for her husband’s newest weight measures and comments. She was struggling with locating the record and comment because there were too many unorganized papers and sections, and she was not sure about who conducted the measure (right).
In some rooms, comment board would be placed for visitors to check for new comments. Some patients or patient families like to listen to radio or engage in tablet games for entertainment.
Volunteers have to complete the Hourly log and the Activity Report per visit on papers or on PDF files. They have to email them to the Volunteer coordinator for hour-counting and record-keeping.
Volunteer Journey Map
Next, to more concretely understand the volunteer experience, I summarized my experiences along with other volunteers’ experience .
Generally, volunteers go through the following stages upon entering hospice care.
After volunteers started volunteering, they might experience confusion in the onboarding process. Feelings of discouragement follow. Many volunteers might quit at this point, thus leading to issues of retention.
If volunteers can be encouraged, supported, and valued, they might be able to recollect passion and confidence to continue volunteering, and become willing to share their experiences/mentor other volunteers.
Insights and Value Proposition
Clear, transparent communication is key
Raise public awareness of the correct conception of hospice
How might we improve information transparency for better internal communication while spreading awareness about hospice to the external world?
User Scenarios
Designing the System
Accessibility Considerations
System & Information Architecture
When designing the Lumi system, we wanted to embrace differences amongst patients, patient families, and different IDT members. Since their ages range widely and have varying abilities and disabilities, we followed several accessibility considerations to make sure the Lumi system is as inclusive as possible.
For instance, we wanted to incorporate voice assistant, voice recognition, volume control, font control, and brightness autoadjust features for all devices to make inputs more accessible. For outputs, we added notification and button sounds and haptic feedback.
All digital interfaces design follow the WCAG color contrast guideline.
Hi-fidelity
