Love Notes: a thought exercise | UXD (lite) & communication| May 2020
Love Notes
communicating with loved ones in hard times
Lost in the rush to develop new technologies and strategies to contain and cope with to the pandemic, is the human side of the equation - the devastating loneliness, anxiety and depression for hospital patients, as well as the enduring psychological trauma on families who never had a chance to say goodbye to a loved one.
How might we design a method of meaningful communication between loved ones, for use in instances such as illness or nearing end-of-life? How about when physically separated?
thought partner
Vicky Chen
opportunity
my personal experience
The problem I encountered was that it was difficult to have a meaningful conversation with someone I loved when I felt like I was screaming.
As a compensatory behavior, I used the voice memo app on my phone to prerecord messages. When I was with my grandmother, I played messages back to her at a volume in which she could hear.
Given the current state of mobile communications, such a question might, at first take, seem simple and straightforward. However, seniors already suffer from a variety of health conditions and functional limitations that limit their ability to use existing communication technology. As a result, the solution must be universally designed, enabling anyone, regardless of visual, auditory, cognitive or motor ability to communicate and to do so in a meaningful way. As yet, no such software is available.
my personal experience, extrapolated
This experience got me thinking about opportunities to help better communicate with the dying. There are plenty of other instances in which someone is sick but a family member doesn’t live in the same state or instances where you might not be physically present in moments of lucidity.
DESIGN CRITERIA
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Inclusive of all people (Versatile in use (visual, auditory))
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Relevant in multiple differing end-of-life scenarios
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Hardware agnostic
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Platform that can be adapted to be highly personalized
who are the stakeholders?
what could an interaction be like?
Sender:
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System or sender/receiver prompts conversation
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User “creates a virtual package”
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Share photo/video/activity/emotion/context-----> package (voice/image/video)
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Attach simple messages e.g. I miss you! How are you doing right now? ----> package
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Send "package"'
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Receiver:
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Receive package
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Read (or hear) and process package
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“Love Notes” archives package
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Retrieve previous packages if needed
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Send response to sender
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voice/image/video-could ask caregiver for help
Caregiver
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Receive an alert notification about message for patient
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Assist with retrieving/ accessing / playing / creating message if needed
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Original Sender (now recipient):
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Receive response from receiver
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Read and process response
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Store response into archive
what components are needed?
journey map
what could another use case look like?
physical separation context
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the result
LOVE NOTES
As simple as it seems, Love Notes is a multi-media sharing platform for users to archive and share memories and messages with their loved ones. Users don't have to have an account to send a message, but it's a small communication system designed for creating meaningful connection through a variety of means, depending on physical limitations.