GreatCall Link 2.0

Overview

In summer 2018, Best Buy acquired the San Diego based GreatCall. This was part of the strategic plan in an effort for Best Buy to tap into the health and wellness space for the aging community. 

GreatCall provides connected technology solutions in the aging-in-place space. GreatCall’s health and safety products includes smart phone, flip phone, pedant, and wearable devices. With one touch on the device, GreatCall customers are connected to 5Star emergency response 24/7 support. The connected devices can be managed and monitored through the GreatCall mobile app called Link. 

Project Goals

In March 2019, a small team at the Best Buy Technology Center was assembled to takeover the development of the Link app. I was the lead UX designer responsible for improving the app’s ability to support and empower family caregivers, through refining current features, as well as realizing untapped opportunities. 

My team inherited the Link app that was outdated due to lack of allocated design and development resources. For the next 10 months, we set out to work toward 2 key milestones - a beta launch and the consumer launch shortly after. 

Design Process

Discovery

When talking about the aging-in-place space, it’s important to acknowledge it’s often a family fair that involved the immediate family members as well as others in the close circle. Often time, the senior is living alone or with a spouse. A primary family caregiver looks after the senior’s wellbeing. The caregiver’s responsibilities can be anything from checking in with the senior in a regular basis, chauffeuring,  accompanying to doctor’s appointments, grocery shopping, helping around the house, managing senior’s finance…the list go on. 

The Link app shared the loads for family caregivers. The app informs caregiver their senior’s daily activity level, and alerts unusual activities based on data received from senior’s device. With the help of GPS location, fall detection techology, and the GreatCall emergency response just a touch of button away, the caregivers will have a peace of mind knowing their loved one is maintaining the independent and quality of lives they desire.

After further examination the research and usability documentations, I felt here was a gap and a lack of deeper understanding from the family caregiver's perspective. 

Caregiver Card Sort

I chose to conduct a caregiver interview and card sorting to gain that missing insights. I scaled and modified the study test plan to accommodate the aggressive timeline and to be compliance with policies and legal considerations.

What I found was unlike our previous hypothesis. That senior’s where about and detailed routine info are important to the family caregivers. The interview suggested the needs of caregivers vary greatly based on the senior’s condition. The needs of that information only matters when the senior is in situations they required help. Caregivers I interviewed express the desire to support their seniors’ independence and their privacy.

Ultimately, caregivers want peace of mind. They want a system that their loved ones can leverage. And for them to be informed when needed. 

I compiled the study report and reviewed with the researcher before sharing with the immediate team members. The insights were shared with internal and external partners. The findings are fundamental in the upcoming IA and feature priority. 

We learned from this exercise was that family caregiver’s needs varies, based on their loved one’s condition and their family dynamics.

The role of caregiving triggered when family suddenly experienced series of events that shift the family dynamics. It could be anything from an injury to aging-related medical procedure that resulted the loved one's tempeeoray or permanent disablity. The task of caring for an aging family member become demanding overtime. Burnout is common amongst family caregivers, as they struggle to find balance in their own life.

Feature Prioritization

Next, I sat down with the project manager to determined what is the MVP for the team. By now, we had collected sufficient business and user insights as well as technology capabilities and limitations to start defining it. 

Not all features are created equal. Instead of taking the existing features and gave a once-over, we took a user-centric approach and ranked each features' importance based on 2 criteria: 

• How much value does it bring to the end-users?

• Realistically, would the app’s technology be able to deliver value-added experience?

Between the leads, we put together the prioritized feature list:

Dashboard

In the initial Link dashboard, the senior’s device was very much front and center. To the original design’s defense, a dead device would render the app useless. That product-centric design approach was precisely why the app was fundamentally flawed in its user experience. 

The data collected from the device should inform the caregiver about their senior - “mom is going about her routine”, “mom is at the library doing her volunteer work”, “mom is protected her device appears to be working.” The dashboard was designed to give that insights. 

Activity Log

The initial activity log consisted of location updates, urgent response call log, device battery warnings, and check-in questions. I took a step back and revisited this feature from the perspective of a caregiver persona. By asking “What's the problem we’re trying to solve?” A hypothesis was formed that a consolidated activity log makes it harder for caregiver to find relevant information they need. 

Design System

Our team was lean and fast moving. The dev was often just a step behind design. A lot of time the engineers started with placeholder until design was finalized. Design system was in this case not just a guidance, but a lifeline for the team and my sanity.

I worked with the Standard Team on formulating a design system for the Link app. Our approach was to adopt the existing design system intended for the retail app. As we learn more about the unique features and requirements for the healthcare design space, we can then modify the system accordingly. With this approach, we were able to focus on the style guide first, pattern library later. 

Link app users are predominately older adults. Designing an age-appropriate design system meant not only the font and colors need to take into account of aging related vision and mobility deterioration, the communication style and the approach with user interface depends largely on our understanding of the Link users' technology adoption and user’s mental model. 

We also added a few features:

Device Info

GreatCall’s line of health and safety product range from conventional phones to wearables. Each device varies in capacities and features. However, all devices have GPS tracking, device battery info, and ability to contact 5Star service with one touch.

Typically, the family caregiver is also the tech support for the senior. Device Info screen is created to provide caregiver information needed so they can help maintain and troubleshoot the device as needed. 

Tap to Call

Whether the caregiver lives within 20 mins to their senior, or hundred of miles away, phone call is universally the way family communicate. We learned that caregiver and their senior talk to each other in regular basis. Provide an easy access for the family to get hold of each other align with the app’s vision and user value. 

Design, Validate, Repeat

As the product development moving in a certain cadence to meet the milestones, design took the lean approach in validating user problems and design solutions. 

Design started with low-fidelity wireframes to allow me quickly collect feedback internally with team members and stakeholders. The same wireframes then built into prototype for usability study. Design was iterated and refined based on uncovered usability insights. Then it went through more validation.  

This process continue throughout the design process. Time and resources were constantly a challenge. I leveraged whatever was available in supporting the research efforts and getting the validation needed in a timely manner. It required sometimes for me to rollup the sleeve and conduct user interviews or run online usability studies. In other cases I worked with the researchers in San Diego, coordinating usability sessions.

I find usability study a great opportunity for the team to gain empathy and build shared values in our work. I made it a priority to invite the team and the project stakeholders to observe the usability sessions and afterward to be informed with the usability reports. 

Advocating, Alignments

A good app experience took more than just the app team alone. A network of cross-disciplinary teams need to have a collective sense of ownership to enable everyone contribute to the app’s completion.

The fostering of the collective ownership takes efforts and intentionally create the time, space, and various ways for people to be involved. Over the course of the project, I built relationship with remote team members through regular meetings to review design progress, share research findings, and to align on milestones. I tried to keep the communication a two-way channels through informal and formal brainstorming and problem solving sessions. 

Design Studio 

In September, the Seattle team leads visited GreatCall at San Diego. During the visit, I facilitated a Design Studio with cross-functional Link app individual contributors and stakeholders. The group focused on a problem core to the Link app end-to-end user experience. The participants were subject experts from marketing, design, product, business, and customer experience. At the end of the day, we walked away with common understanding of the potential to improve the user experience as an individual, as well as a team.

Project Visibility

At the beginning of the project, my manager’s advice to me was to maintain a high visibility on the design work and how it’s shaping the product’s user experience. I took that advice to heart, until this day. 

Design having high visibility translate to opportunities for collaborations that could potentially be a disruptive game changer. Also, when project was given any type of visibility, it generate interests and excitement that in terms benefits the overall development.

As a UX practitioner, a big part of what I do is to convey ideas. Internally, progress briefing and demo were scheduled in regular cadence with the executives and supporting teams. Externally, we wanted to tap into the knowledge of established healthcare and medical community. It was critical for us to leverage the clinical and the industry perspectives of the aging space.

In addition, the team was growing. Attracting talents with relevant background would undoubtedly helping us in that respect. With those rational, Best Buy sponsored a Design for Healthcare Meetup, where I gave a talk about connected healthcare in the home. My talk focused on the implication of connected healthcare products and services. The solutions and learning since we started on this project endeavor. 

Outcome

GreatCall Link Commercial Beta launched in October. The consumer facing Link app launched shortly after in the Android and the iOS app store. With the new release, the improvement such as stabilized app performance,

Learnings, Next Step

There is no substitute to putting the product in the open. With analytic in-place and customer feedback, the team monitored the app and quickly learned and iterated. What we learned and iterated would be the next use case. Or ask me if you run into me in person!