Care Connect is a mobile app designed for Alzheimer’s Disease caregivers.
CASE STUDY
Consolidating mobilization of support and information retrieval within a single mobile platform.
TYPE
UX Research, UX Design, Rapid Prototyping
DURATION
2 weeks
Self-led with guidance from DesignLab Mentor and Group Crits
TEAM
STAKEHOLDERS
Alzheimer’s Disease caregivers
Project Overview
About
More than 11 million Americans shoulder the immense responsibility of unpaid care for loved ones living with Alzheimer’s Disease or other dementias. Behind the staggering statistics—where 67% of caregivers are women, and nearly a third are seniors themselves—lie stories of unwavering strength, resilience, and sacrifice. These caregivers devote nearly 17 billion hours each year navigating relentless emotional, financial, and physical challenges.
For many, this journey is marked by love and duty but also profound stress. 59% of caregivers report high emotional strain, and they face twice the hardship compared to those caring for individuals without dementia. Managing every aspect of a patient’s life—from administering medication and logging changes in health to providing transportation and handling legal information—leaves caregivers stretched thin.
As I delved into this problem space, it became clear that Alzheimer's caregiving is not just about physical care but an overwhelming cognitive and emotional load that demands better support solutions.
In a 2022 report from the Alzheimer’s Association titled Alzheimer’s Facts and Figures, researchers shared that “59% of family caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s or other dementias rated the emotional stress of caregiving as high or very high.”
To define the problem scope, I leveraged the Activity-Centered Design (ACD) model from Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things. This approach focuses on identifying essential tasks and workflows that users need to perform in order to identify the most critical aspects of the solution, ensuring that the project remains tightly aligned with its core objectives.
Scoping the Project
I did some research to understand the daily experiences of AD caregivers at a high level, using these findings and the Activity-Centered Design model to identify and broadly categorize the key processes and tasks in a caregiver's day.
The Alzheimer’s Caregivers Network and Alzheimer’s Association are nonprofit organizations dedicated to providing support for AD caregivers and sharing information about the condition. The caregivers’ personal accounts help us understand what a day in their life typically looks like from beginning to end.
High-Level Daily Activities
I concluded that caregivers have a high volume of tasks that are diverse and dynamic in nature —
They might be able to benefit from something that helps them manage these tasks in a way that affords emotional and social support, real-time information updates and decision-making support, and easy integration with existing routines.
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To add more context around this problem space, I learned about what trends and patterns currently existed in the AD Therapeutics / Health Tech market:
01. Research
With this primer on the industry and an initial but still very basic understanding of what caregiving duties actually entailed, I began the design research process to delve more deeply into the lived experiences of Alzheimer’s Disease caregivers.
To gain deeper insights and uncover day-to-day caregiving experiences, common challenges, and current tools or workarounds caregivers use, I conducted:
3 Semi-Structured Interviews: with current Alzheimer's caregivers.
A Survey with 10 Caregivers: recruited from Alz Connected, Aging Care, and AlzheimersDisease.net caregiver support forums and one AD Caregivers Facebook group that I was able to join with moderator approval.
Interviews
To kick off the design research, I defined a few big research questions to answer —
Data synthesis through qualitative (4x4 matrix from interviews) and quantitative (survey analysis) methods, providing a comprehensive understanding of user insights and patterns to inform thoughtful design solutions.
02. Define
As I analyzed the interview data and referenced the existing literature and available resources, there were a few patterns that emerged. Most poignantly, the caregiving process for Alzheimer’s patients is an emotionally and physically demanding one that often leaves caregivers overwhelmed, isolated, and struggling to balance their own well-being. In addition, caregivers rely heavily on routines to manage care effectively but face challenges in staying organized and engaging their loved ones meaningfully. Thus, many use fragmented tools but would find a simplified, integrated solution tailored to their unique needs useful. Caregivers themselves struggle with social isolation and lack of emotional support, highlighting the importance of community and accessible resources.
The themes identified across the data led to the creation of three primary insights.
HOW MIGHT WE?
How might we design a support system that helps caregivers manage daily tasks, access self-care resources, and mobilize support from their social circles to ease the emotional and practical demands of caregiving?
03. Ideate
While this project did require a digital solution, the digital approach also seemed especially well-suited to addressing caregivers’ needs, offering them a scalable, accessible, and user-friendly tool to navigate their challenges. After ideating some potential digital solutions, I narrowed the possibilities down to deliberate further.
I decided to move forward with Solution #1 because I felt it offered the most comprehensive approach while still remaining within the project scope and timeline. I also felt that the cons of this solution could be more easily tackled through the design of the app itself as opposed to the other solutions.
To begin structuring the app’s information architecture, I created a mobile app map that outlined content hierarchy + feature relationships. I used the map to then build task / user flows to define the granular user interactions within the app and determine the necessary screens for effective task completion.
I then drafted some rough low-fidelity sketches of different layout ideas, creating a skeleton to work with for successive steps. I wanted to generate a variety of quick ideas that could be further iterated upon as opposed to spending a lot of time on a few highly detailed ones.
Finalizing the rough sketches of the mobile app allowed me to clearly understand the visual direction I was headed in and helped me create mid-fidelity wireframes to add more precision to the sketches I had on paper.
Through ongoing iteration of the low-fidelity wireframes, I was able to start finalizing the UI and move on to creating higher-fidelity wireframes—prioritizing accessibility, clarity, and user-centric functionality. I wanted to ensure the visual design remained accessible, featured intuitive navigation and included simplified interactions to accommodate varying levels of tech literacy.
Refinement
Calendar features allows mobilization and coordination of support across a care team that is personally set up by the caregiver.
Wellness Journal features a symptom tracker to measure, reference and categorize a variety of symptoms over time.
Caregivers can manage active medications and track changes in activities in the ADL section of the Wellness Journal.
Caregivers can access resources to support their own self-care / personal needs and can also communicate with their care team.
04. Prototype
With key insights from my research, I developed a high-fidelity prototype to demonstrate how Care Connect streamlines task management and emotional support for Alzheimer’s caregivers. This interactive mockup showcases the core user flow, including onboarding, task scheduling, and support network features, ensuring an intuitive and accessible experience. Designed with real user pain points in mind, the prototype allows for usability testing and iteration, ensuring the final product effectively meets caregiver needs.
Reflections
Caregiving is a deeply personal, often complex act that extends far beyond managing tasks—it’s about navigating relationships, emotions, and boundaries that shift constantly. Through this project, it became clear that the challenges caregivers face aren’t just logistical but profoundly relational. Many hesitate to ask for help not because support isn’t there, but because they worry about burdening those around them or stepping on toes. This insight reshaped how I approached design: focusing less on task lists and more on creating a space for transparent, compassionate collaboration that respects each person’s role and limits.
While the current design serves as a conceptual starting point rather than a finished product, it lays out a path toward more balanced and sustainable caregiving partnerships. Moving forward, usability testing with a diverse group of caregivers and care recipients will be critical, especially to ensure accessibility for older adults and those less familiar with technology. Collaboration with healthcare professionals and legal experts will also help align the product with real-world care workflows, privacy standards, and ethical concerns around consent and data sharing.
Partnering with caregiver organizations for pilot testing will not only validate functional elements—like task management and communication—but also surface the more subtle, emotional impacts of the tool: whether it actually eases stress, clarifies expectations, and fosters a fairer distribution of care responsibilities.
CareConnect isn’t meant to fix caregiving—it aims to provide a thoughtful framework that supports the interpersonal work caregivers already do, honoring the delicate balance of autonomy, empathy, and trust. Any future iteration will need to stay grounded in these realities, evolving alongside the needs of those it serves while remaining simple, sensitive, and responsive to the many ways care is given and received.