Designers
Wenxuan Zhou, Shengjie Wan
Year
2024
Category
New Talent
Country
United States
School
University of Washington
Teacher
Ekin Yasin
Three questions for the project team
What was the particular challenge of the project from a UX point of view?
Designing a user experience for senior users with Alzheimer's, who may not be tech-savvy, presents a significant UX challenge. The interface must be highly intuitive and use simple, instinctive interactions to reduce confusion and complexity, thereby minimizing the learning curve. Additionally, it should be flexible enough to accommodate a wide range of cognitive abilities by offering varying levels of complexity and assistance, tailored to the user's specific disease stage. To address these challenges, our solution incorporates feedbacks from testing, user-friendly design principles, personalized content delivery, and adaptive user interfaces that respond to the user's abilities and needs.
What was your personal highlight in the development process? Was there an aha!-moment, was there a low point?
The most rewarding part of developing Echoes was brainstorming use cases for different stages of Alzheimer's. Researching user needs was a humbling experience. We gained significant insight into the emotional and cognitive challenges Alzheimer's patients face, which ignited a fire in us to create solutions tailored to their needs. We encountered a challenging moment when we tried to balance functionality with simplicity. We addressed it by identifying the simplest interaction that could significantly benefit our users. This entire process was bittersweet.
Where do you see yourself and the project in the next five years?
As AI continues to evolve, Echoes could potentially become even 'smarter.' More intuitive interactions, personalized content, and adaptive voice commands could greatly simplify use for our less tech-savvy users.
The huge increase in compute power also open exciting possibilities. We envision a future where Echoes becomes genuinely multi-modal. Imagine seniors with Alzheimer's disease experiencing and benefiting from the solution through various interfaces, not just headsets.
