COCO (Caregiving for Caregivers Online) is a B2B startup that provides wellness interventions for caregivers through their personable chatbot AI, CocoBot. While working on a team with one other designer and two dedicated researchers, we aimed to enhance how caregivers approached and practiced self wellness.
Nonprofessional family caregivers dedicate their time, attention, and emotion toward improving the wellbeing of their loved ones with chronic conditions. Oftentimes, caregivers forget their own needs in the process. Our goal was to utilize COCO’s mobile app and chatbot AI to help these caregivers take better care of themselves. However, our first step was to conduct research on caregivers’ day-to-day lives and why the currently face blockers to self-care.
We guided our research with three primary questions:
A competitive analysis of 18 apps in the realm of mental healthcare and chatbot AI, a 1-week diary study of 5 participants followed by contextual interviews, and a review of 62 academic research papers. We conducted thematic analysis across our different methods, which included quotes from participants, photos from the diary study, snippets from the literature review, and findings from the competitive analysis.
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Due to the constraints of working within the confines of a mobile app and utilizing this app's chatbot AI, we focused on which pain points would be best addressed via our intervention. We settled on three main pain points.
“But there was, for me, just too much set up... I could never figure out the tasks I wanted to accomplish or what the complexity of [the tasks] were.”
“I wish my everyday had a little bit more structure to it... Because I want my daughter to go back to school and I want to be able to go to work again and just have a routine and schedule again.”
“I need reassurance, sometimes I don't feel like what I'm doing is right... A smile from them [her recipient], like a genuine smile, really sums up that there will be that they're being taken care of, they feel safe and comfortable.”
The four of us spent time incorporating these defined pain points into our overall mission statement.
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Finalized version
We went through a Crazy 8's exercise to throw as many ideas down. Eventually, we narrowed down our focus onto two concepts: Photo Journaling and a focus mode for self-wellness dubbed Quiet Time . I was the primary designer for the latter concept.
Since users would primarily be coming to the CocoBot app for the chatting feature, we decided to support a chat-based onboarding experience to encourage caregivers to set up time for themselves. I provided quick response options, so that caregivers can spend less time deliberating and also get inspiration for what they'd want to focus their time on. I also designed a manual pathway of setting up goals and focus mode.
Caregivers would also have a dedicated space or "mode" to action on their self-wellness. We'd notify them of their scheduled Quiet Time via push notifications, but also give them flexibility to reschedule or skip Quiet Time sessions. When caregivers choose to skip a session or shorter their session, we made sure to confirm their option using guiltless language.
After our first rounds of design iterations, we wanted to know if we were building the right thing. How do our explorations answer the user needs outlined above? With the evaluative research we organized, we sought to learn about the desirability of new features and how users would interact with the new proposed features in silos, and also in-conjunction with each other.
Users expressed that "Quiet Time" as a name didn't resonate given that some activities people would want to do could be loud and adventurous.
Given how long the post-session follow up was and how the content was laid out, users felt it would be arduous to fill it out every time.
Users wanted a way to see the impact of the metrics they were tracking via Quiet Time. There was a desire to see progress over time.
After polling the users we tested with, "Recharge" as a term was more well-received and made more sense for the activities users wanted to partake in. So, we updated all of our copy to reflect the change. We also added illustrations of the company's CocoBot mascot within the adjustable reminders screen. This was to add a more light-hearted and visually-engaging feel to the experience.
The post-session follow up cuts down on the content. The most important metrics are summarized in one sentence, and we only require caregivers to click relevant tags to reflect, rather than requiring free-text entry.
In order to address the desire to see how impact of the metric-tracking, we introduced a feature where caregivers can review their accomplishments and reflections for the week. This includes both Recharge metrics and data collected from chat sessions with the chatbot. We hope this gives caregivers insight on how certain actions inspire certain behaviors, and also incentivize them to continue focusing on their wellness.
A big learning for me was the responsibility we have as researchers and designers. Given the subject matter of our project, there were points during interviews that would get particularly emotional for our participants. It is important to engage with research participants as people and know how to validate vulnerability.
After the conclusion of this client work, the design and engineering teams at COCO incorporated two designed features, "Memory Journal" and "Recharge Time" into their first release MVP.
