CareCam

The Challenge

Currently, there is a communication, collaboration and understanding gap between ASD children, parents, and therapists. Parents struggle to record children’s unpredictable behaviors, and therapists have difficulty getting children’s behavior data before giving treatment plans. Additionally, children have difficulty expressing their needs and are sensitive to the clinical environment, leading to frustration for all parties involved.

The Solution

An autism disorder analysis tool to provide parents of 3-10 year-old autistic children a seamless and secure way to record, analyze and share children's behavior data with therapists and teachers.

Caution*

This project entails conducting sensitive research on children with ASD. However, all profiles of the children and their parents are fictitious, yet based on real-life cases.

A Validated Physical Product

CareCam is not only a design concept but a real-world solution that is technically achievable and can be manufactured at scale for commercial or industrial use.

The Feasible Digital Products

CareCam is a service design that connects a mobile app for parents with a web application for therapists.

Data Visualization & Data Security Solutions

CareCam can visualize recorded behavioral data in an intuitive and understandable way, allowing parents to better care for their children. Additionally, all data will be saved in local storage to ensure data safety, unless it is shared with a therapist via the internet.

What Is ASD?

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental condition that affects individuals in different ways. Children with ASD may experience challenges with social communication, sensory processing, repetitive behaviors, and restrictive interests. These difficulties can pose challenges for both parents and therapists who are working to support the child.

Why ASD?

Autism Spectrum Disorder is very common among Chinese and American children, with 1 in 68 being diagnosed with ASD. These children's lives can be difficult and isolating because they have difficulty communicating and interacting with others.

Investigation at Xin Xin ASD Kindergarten, Ximan, China. Aug 23, 2020

Why Is Life Hard For Children With ASD?

After interviewing psychologist Dr. Yie-Wen Yvonne Kuan, we now know that children with ASD may exhibit behaviors such as screaming and crying, which can be triggered by various factors such as background noises. Each child has their own unique behavioral patterns, which are constantly changing.

Why Is Hard For Parents & Therapist To Take Care Of Children With ASD?

After interviewing several parents, we have gathered key insights which we will present here.

1. Forget to take notes.

"My child experiences negative behaviors quickly in response to loud noise, sometimes I don’t time to react what’s happening."

2. Cannot capture details.

"My child’s negative behaviors appear sudden and intense, which is challenging me to manage and catch everything."

3. Need to fill in a long patient form.

"I was asked to fill in a long patient form before seeing therapist, but the problem is I don’t remember all the details."

User Journey Map

We drew a journey map here to better understand key pain points in each stage.

Storyboard

In the storyboard, we have imagined a data analysis tool that enables parents of autistic children to record and automatically upload behavior data to their phones. This allows for easy recall, annotation, and sharing with therapists for diagnosis and feedback, thus bridging the communication gap and improving collaboration between parents and therapists.

Research Conclusion

There is a communication, collaboration and understanding gap between ASD children, parents, and therapists. Parents struggle to record children’s unpredictable behaviors, and therapists have difficulty getting children’s behavior data before giving treatment plans. Additionally, children have difficulty expressing their needs and are sensitive to the clinical environment, leading to frustration for all parties involved.
So a data analysis tool can help to bridge this gap and help parents and therapists to better take care of children with ASD.

Design Direction

A seamless way to record, analyze, and share behavior data, and turn it into actionable insights that are easily accessible.

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How to record data?

We analyzed how our competitors solve the problem. However, their products require users to manually input data or to hold their phone to take video while their child is exhibiting negative behaviors, which can be complicated, time-consuming, or even impossible. Furthermore, the data visualization in their products can be difficult to understand.

A wearable device.

Based on our analysis of the competitors, we agree that video data is more intuitive and we would like to adopt this idea.
However, since the behaviors of children with ASD can happen abruptly, we need a wearable device to record video data without requiring the user to hold it by hand. Initially, we narrowed down our ideas to goggles, necklaces, brooches, and watches as they fit the height of children aged 3-10 years.

Brooch Is The Best

We created mockups of goggles, necklaces, brooches, and watches to test the utility, stability, and effectiveness of video recording during ASD behaviors. We found that the brooch and goggles, when placed at the right height on the body, provided the best video data.
However, considering accessibility, we need to address issues such as sight impairment and the potential discomfort of wearing goggles for extended periods. Based on these considerations, we concluded that the brooch was the best option among the four.

CareCam

We finally designed CareCam, a brooch that has the video recording function.

How to interact with CareCam?

Capture both triggers and interventions in a semi- automated simple way.

Every behavior has a trigger. Once activated, the CareCam device can keep recording audio data. When a behavior occurs and the parent presses the button, it will save the past 5 minutes of audio that was captured, and record video for an additional 5 minutes.

Why 5mins audio data + 5mins video data?

This solution is a compromise due to engineering limitations. Initially, we hoped that CareCam could automatically record video data for 24 hours. However, after receiving feedback from engineers, we learned that the CareCam has the following limitations:
1. Battery limitation: CareCam was too small to support a powerful battery.
2. Memory card limitation: CareCam was too small to support a powerful memory card.

As a result, we had to compromise and settle on a design solution that records 5 minutes of audio followed by 5 minutes of video. The engineering of CareCam involves:
1. Automatically record audio data, which will overwrite every 5 minutes.
2. Subsequent 5 mins video data: When CareCam is activated, it automatically saves the previous 5 minutes of audio and records the subsequent 5 minutes of video.

How to annotate and review behavior data?

Rapid Prototype

We created prototypes, conducted rounds of user research and usability tests to understand the data that users would like to input and review in their behavior journals.

Usability Testing

We organized a workshop and tested the prototype with teachers and parents at Xin Xin ASD School, Xiamen, China.

Xin Xin ASD School, Xiamen, China. Nov. 06, 2020

Iteration

We iterated our design based on the feedback we received, which included comments on unclear home page events, a need for more time to read text titles, confusion regarding the floating camera button, and unclear data visualization.

Make behavior data accessible to capture, annotate, share, analyze, and learn.

User Flow

Mobile Interfaces

How to ensure data security?

Children with ASD are sensitive and need to be well-protected, so we need to ensure that the data saved on parents' mobile phones and therapists' desktops is secure.

Saving data in local storage.
Masking data in therapist’s web product.

There are two ways to ensure the safety of data. The first is to store data in the local storage of parents' mobile phones, which can be shared with the therapist when necessary. The second is to mask patient data in the therapist's web application after three minutes of inactivity. After ten minutes of inactivity, the therapist will be automatically logged out.

Freemium Growth

Our business strategy involves making the CareCam app free for parents to use, while charging therapists or insurance companies for access to the portal and premium features.
This allows us to generate revenue while also providing a valuable service to parents of children with ASD, who can use the app to monitor their children's behavior and progress. By charging therapists and insurance companies, we are able to offer additional features and support that are specifically designed for their needs, such as access to detailed patient profiles, data analysis tools, and communication features.

Staying resilient in the face of rejection is essential.

Children with ASD are a sensitive topic in China and the U.S. During primary research, we faced challenges and received no positive replies from parents to participate in our interviews. We almost gave up but our luck changed when we reached out to a headmaster at an ASD school who appreciated our plan and offered to assist us. With her help, we were able to continue our project. So as a designer, it's important to persevere and not give up. If your idea adds value to the customer, they will accept your design.
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Testing is an intuitive way to evaluate your design.

We debated the idea of placing a floating button on the home screen in case parents forgot to activate Carecam during their children's ASD behaviors. However, we made no progress in our discussion until we conducted testing. Through testing, we discovered that all participants knew to press the Carecam activate button first. One limitation of this testing was that we set up a task for participants, which may not represent real scenarios. Further testing is needed to improve this idea.
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Accessibility is our top priority.

While the brooch is not perfect, it is the best option in our mockups. We initially considered both Carecam brooch and Goggle Carecam but ultimately chose the brooch due to sight and weight issues with the glasses. Engineers informed us that camera glasses have limited battery life of 2-3 hours, and wearing glasses for extended periods can be uncomfortable for some users. Goggles also require customized prescriptions, which is not easily accessible for everyone. Thus, the brooch was a more accessible option for all users. However, we remain open to other suggestions that may arise in the future.

Thank You To My Team

I wanted to express my deepest gratitude to everyone on the CareCam project team for their hard work, dedication, and collaboration. Despite the challenges of working remotely during the pandemic, we were able to successfully complete this project together. I especially want to thank Guang Lu for teaching me valuable product design skills and Junying Chang for helping me develop research and business strategy skills. Your guidance and expertise were essential to the success of this project, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn from you. I am proud of what we have achieved together, and I look forward to continuing to work together on future projects.