Epsy Caregiver mode
Enabling multiple family caregivers stay on top of their patients’ meds and seizure patterns
When
June 2022 - Sep 2023
Context
Epilepsy medication, symptoms and seizures tracking healthcare platform
Epsy was set up by the Boston Consulting Group as a start-up unit within Livanova in 2020
Native apps - iOS and Android (US region only)
Team
Senior Product Designer (me-Lead)
4 x iOS and Android developers
1 x back end engineer
Head of Product
Customer success manager
Design team colleagues (reviews, critiques)
Challenge
The Epsy app has been helping epilepsy patients in the US manage their meds, seizure and symptoms since 2020. One of the biggest user requests was to add the ‘caregiver mode’, which would allow family members of epilepsy sufferers to log seizures and meds on their behalf. There were 2 known issues:
Even though 20% of users self-declared as ‘caregivers’ in onboarding, they were forced to create an account for their person with epilepsy
Caregivers with 2 epilepsy patients (e.g. children) had to hack their way by creating 2 separate accounts on the app or occasionally use the same account but record details for both patients in notes attached to seizure events
User requests gathered by customer support requesting the caregiver feature
2. Discovery
I gathered information about user needs from various sources:
customer support feedback
watched historical user interviews with caregivers
carried out a new user survey to validate assumptions from interviews
reviewed health apps that have shared profiles
Team synthesis of qualitative answers
Summary learnings from the survey
Competitive and best practice review of apps allowing multiple profiles sharing
3. Information architecture
Ran several workshops with several front-end, back-end developers, heads of product, engineering and design to share results from discovery, align on ‘to-be’ architecture and define the scope of the first phase of work. Key challenge was to understand all potential edge cases and define what should be included in the first release.
Biggest challenge: big variety of edge cases and mindsets to consider (1 caregiver - 1 patient, 1 - multiple patients, multiple caregivers - 1 patient, caregiver who is also a patient themselves). The scope of the project started growing very quickly.
Information architecture changes to accommodate the ‘caregiver mode’
Edge cases / UX review with developers and key stakeholders
4. User testing
I worked iteratively with developers and users to hone the user experience and trim back the scope, focusing on most important features. While some features were not essential for day 1, they were easy to build, such as switching between multiple patient profiles. Getting the MVP just right is always a balancing act.
I carried out 2 rounds of user testing:
Round 1: unmoderated prototype testing in Maze (profile switching)
Round 2: moderated user testing over Zoom - the profile switching flow
5. UI crafting
I consolidated the user testing findings into the following user flows and final designs which I handed over to developers.
6. Design system
During the course of the project I re-used existing component where possible, but on several occasions also added new components in line with the Epsy brand guidelines and accessibility considerations.
Added components and patterns to the Epsy design system
6. Impact
The feature is built, under feature flags and due to be fully released in Q1 2024 (several back end infrastructure restructure projects slowed down the project)
I conducted 5 rounds of QA across both iOS and Android, constantly raising tickets and looking out for usability, copy and UI bugs