Ideation
Defining the problem
Context and Inspiration (toggle to see more)
In the city, many people live alone, no matter students, working-class, or seniors. While living alone, it is difficult to get help when an emergency happens. These emergencies could be sudden diseases, break-out robbery, or any other type of danger (there has been a case a young woman accidentally locked herself inside the bathroom without her phone).
( I was inspired to do this topic because of my very recent experience of passing out in the bathroom because of low blood sugar. Luckily, I was only passing out for 1 or 2 seconds and recovered very soon but I still hurt my knees in the fall. I was surprised this actually happened to me since I was so confident in my health at this age. It also reminds me of my previous roommate who got acute illness at the midnight after eating something bad. )
Specify problem scale
Working with ideation while researching back and forth, I found the problem addressed now is broad and there are several directions I can go to.
Some questions to be further considered:
1) Are we designing for small-chance emergencies that can happen to everyone?
Yes
2) Or are we designing for a specific type of emergency that happens often to a specific group of people?
Yes, but not often.
3) Or are we designing for a specific group of people in terms of their safety in a broad sense?
No
4) Is there any solution to the problem already? Does it solve the problem? If not, what is the reason? maybe the solution is not successful or maybe people are not aware of the solution.
Design for who: The large number of people living alone who have no emergency plan.
(From the search results, it seems that emergency care for seniors has its market already, the major problem is medical emergencies. However, these products may be not inclusive for people of all ages.)
These incidents may be not dangerous for people living with others but can be very dangerous for people living alone. This problem is not well addressed by current solutions because 1) people solely rely on their mobile phones; 2) The major solutions are contacting their family members or the public helplines which are quite limited.
HMW question development
Initial Problem Statement:
Revised Problem Statement:
Possible scenarios
Medical emergency, severe and urgent
A is a 24 female living alone, one day morning when A was in the bathroom she suddenly felt dizzy and fainted on the floor.
Medical emergency, less severe but urgent
B woke at the midnight and felt tremendous pain in his stomach. He can barely go to the hospital by himself. He can not reach out to his contacts because they are all in do not disturb mode.
Abandoned scenarios
Trapped in room (not major concern)
C was trapped in the bathroom without her phone because the lock of the door was broken.
Home invasion (not major concern)
An intruder broke in, D wanted to call for help but afraid of being caught out.
Updated 04/20/2022
Hypothesis
- At home, people may encounter situations where they can not reach out through phone or the internet for help.
- People need immediate help in these situations.
- Family members live far from the person.
- The person lives in a community which may be helpful.
- second to minutes reaction time
Research
general 04/14
Real-world cases of Scenario C:
More cases can be found in Quora and Youtube. A recent Quora post is 2021.
An example of false alarm:
medical emergency 04/20
(Since it is hard to get all the information that supports the problem, so I also wrote the research questions that I didn’t find related results)
- The statistical data of the medical emergencies happened at home, including emergency type, the ratio in all emergencies, people’s age, the number of cases that are not getting help in time, whether alone.
- The common medical emergencies
- Acute attacks of asthma, myocardial infarction, anaphylactic shock, hypoglycemic coma, convulsions, head injuries, and trauma. source: 10.4103/2249-4863.148089
- Solitary confinement and physical health deterioration • https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238510
- Found by accident but it does support that home isolation during the pandemic increase the risks of health problem.
- older people living alone remain at higher risk than their counterparts living with others are poorer self-rated health, difficulty in instrumental activities of daily living, worsening functioning, falls, social isolation, lack of emergency carer, lower consumption of fruit and fibre, and tobacco use. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2043328/
live alone tips 04/28
Some Conclusions from the above research:
- when people move around in their house they usually don’t carry their phones, which makes being locked in a room a real danger.
- According to the report on EHA of seniors, seniors who live alone have higher EHA, which means there are many medical situations that do not need to go to the ER but need someone’s help/care.
- The design of emergency products has to be careful. Children and cats also can play with emergency button for fun.
Updated 04/20/2022
- Although direct research concerning young people living alone is not found, the findings on healthy older people living alone experiencing a higher risk of health problems including not getting emergency care do support the problem statement.
- Also, both research on prisoners and older people living alone proves that isolation has negative effects on people’s mental and physical health.
Interview feedback
Questions:
Did you have this kind of experience and how did you solve it?
What do you think of this idea?
Is this a problem you concerned/ do you feel this is a problem/ do you worry about this?
Feedback
- people (20s) are related to this problem. they strongly share the concern of being sick and cannot find help and the fear of emergencies. They presented their attitude with examples, either their own experience of medical issues or their fears of living alone.
- One pointed out that even living with roommates, it didn’t bring down the risk much.
- One classmate who was in quarantine also thought his isolation made him worried about the problem of emergency.
- The other classmate recalled her experience of being suddenly ill, couldn’t call anyone and no one took care of her during that period.
- Talked about the danger of lack of oxygen when showing because of the steam.
Advice:
list of people to call
call ambulance
iPhone emergency
fire emergency, mental,
narrow down to specific emergencies, like panic attacks.
even have roommate still need someone!
voice assistant
button and app
Existing solutions & inspirations
wearable alarm
amber alert
iPhone emergency contacts
Solution Ideas
portable emergency button informs emergency contacts.
distress signal sending to people nearing
provide important helplines
User Personas
Empathy Map
SAYS
Help!
Painful groan
THINKS
Calm down, you are going to be ok
OMG, I think this is getting severe.
I am really panicking now.
What should I do ?!
What can I do?
I am helpless.
I hope someone will find me.
DOES
Any intuitive thing that they feel is helpful to relieve the pain.
Deep breath.
Try to reach their phone?
FEELS
Arising pain.
Losing conscious.
Panic
Fear
Desperate
Current State Journey Map
Possible situations:
hypoglycemic coma (unconscious)
severe stomachache (can not move)
1 Not feeling good→ 2 severe symptoms and realize oneself in trouble → 3 contact people (family/ambulance) → 4 people answered and come to help
Ideas addressing the opportunities
1 A campaign that makes people aware of medical emergencies and prepares for them by learning about the common symptoms and the helpful resources.
2 Emergency button that can record and send the message to certain contact number. When user pushes the button, it starts to record and the recording will send to the emergency contact. The user can cancel the alarm in the matched app.
3 The community of the residential hall provides emergency service, including helpline and people who can come to the house to assist.
Solution
smart button: support full voice control. button + speaker + microphone + LED
app: store information, receive/cancel requests, help neighbor
Continue the UX design process on your final project:
- Create a future state storyboarding based on your solution statement
- Create a flow diagram of your final project
- Create a style guide for you final project. Your style guide should include primary and secondary palette, primary and secondary typography and button format and shapes
- Create lo-fidelity sketches (can be hand drawn or wireframes)
Style Guide
