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Brain Exercise Initiative App
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An app that offers mental exercises for Alzheimer's patients
ROLE & RESPONSIBILITIES
Product Designer
UX Design
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Methods and Tools: User Journey Map, Wireframes, Hi-Fi Prototypes, Figma
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May 2020 - August 2020
The Brain Exercise app offers mental exercises for Alzheimer's patients to improve their cognitive function. Backed by Dr. Ryuta Kawashima's research, the 30-minute session comprises of math, reading, and writing activities to complete daily, 5 times a week. The better you do, the more difficult the games become.
Problem
In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Brain Exercise Initiative (BEI) volunteers were unable to hold brain exercise programs and had trouble reaching out to seniors to practice their reading, writing, and math skills. This meant that seniors were unable to gain access to resources aimed to help improve their cognitive function.
Solution
We wanted to create a mobile app that seniors can use to improve their cognitive function during the COVID-19 pandemic.
User Journey
Before designing the app, we created a user journey to having a better understanding our users and identify pain points.
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Design Process
Before we began to design, we thought about accessibility and familiarize ourselves with accessible technology by reading articles about best practices for accessible design.
In our designs, we used high-contrast colors, bold fonts, and also included several accessibility settings including ways to narrate text, change font size, increase contrast, reduce motion, and more.
Although we understood that our main audience was likely seniors familiar with technology with moderate cognitive impairment, we also recognized that our aging population would likely have a wide range of abilities and skills, so we included features that would accommodate those users.
Fun pictures and encouraging notifications were included to design a more delightful experience. Additionally, we organized several meetings to fiddle with layouts, formats, colors, and fonts as we tried to optimize the app for our senior audience.
Altogether, designing for the specific audience was a new and challenging task, but our previous research and outstanding grit helped us design something fantastic.
App Demo
Reflection
Properly articulating design decisions
One of the most important roles as a designer is how you communicate with other people, whether that is with team members or stakeholders. The better you can articulate your design decisions to others, the better the design will come out.
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Designing for the Users
When designing for applications, it is very important to consider your users and audience before you begin the design process.