Redefining Senior At-Home Care with AI Innovation

OVERVIEW

Due to the rapid growth of the world’s aging population and high cost of long-term care, there has been an increased demand for family or at-home caregivers—a trend that is expected to continue through the next several decades. A leading provider of consumer health and personal care products was looking for new solutions to address the needs of aging adults and their at-home caregivers within an existing fragmented and confusing market. They approached PARC to help them explore new opportunities within the at-home senior care space. 

OBJECTIVE

Develop products to address the challenges of aging adults and their at-home caregivers
Support for seniors and their caregivers is presently fragmented and confusing, with multiple products and services on the market that only address a single issue. Caregivers are overwhelmed in their role, with little time to dedicate to themselves and their own self-care. And the cared-for face chronic health issues such as reduced mobility and incontinence. Consequently, the care partner relationship has significant informational, logistical, and emotional challenges not addressed by traditional products. PARC’s client was looking for a better way to address these issues simultaneously through various products, with continence care being a key focus.

WHY PARC?

User- and business-centric approach to innovation
PARC brought to their client a unique mix of user experience design, business models and technology expertise. Through their rigorous design-led exploratory process and technological innovations, PARC could help their client create new business opportunities that would provide the greatest market impact with minimal risk, and improve the lives of caregivers and the people in their care. 

DESIGN-LED, RIGOROUS EXPLORATION OF ACCESSIBLE MARKETS (DREAM)

MULTI-PHASED USER EXPERIENCE RESEARCH

Within four months, PARC completed the first of a multi-phased research project, aimed at identifying and validating new business opportunities that would generate value for the client, caregivers and care recipients. 

Collaborative concept generation workshops
PARC and their client conducted extensive background research on the current caregiving landscape to investigate new emerging technology and identified product and service concepts to evaluate further.

User experience probes
PARC developed an iterative, hypothesis-driven research technique to rapidly evaluate two novel concepts around the care partner relationship—one highly pragmatic and one a major unsolved challenge. PARC and client resolved to explore how their vision of a new integrated product-service ecosystem, driven by inexpensive household sensors and AI, could impact these challenges.

• PARC interviewed care partner pairs to gain insight into their goals, frustrations and needs. 
• Based on interview findings, a series of testable value and experience hypotheses were developed around the following concepts:
  • Contextual, personalized information
  • Reframing care partner perceptions of how they care together

Simulated experience probes in the form of a “care kit” were deployed to rigorously test their hypotheses.

• Care kits contained real products for each individual to use, sensors, personalized information and prescribed activities. 
• Each probe elicited realistic responses from end users—allowing the client to understand the impact of the proposed business ideas and technologies without building them in their entirety.

The probe study was iteratively repeated to test additional hypotheses.

Technology exploration
Throughout the probe process, PARC explored solutions for:

• In-home activity sensing
• Personalized information selection
• Automatic selection and reordering of personal care products

Technologies investigated included:

• Deep learning-based computer vision for activity identification
• Product containers that knew when their contents were being consumed
• Personal care information selection and delivery

SOLUTION

Integrated AI-driven product-service platform
Based on the research findings, PARC recommended a holistic approach that used digital technologies paired with AI-selected suites of consumer products from the client’s existing product line. This integrated product-service solution would inform, recommend, empower and create moments of deeper meaningful connection for care partners. It would also help transform the client’s relationship with its users from purely transactional interactions with consumable products to an extended, supportive service experience with continuous interaction and feedback.

RESULTS

Comprehensive service design package
PARC provided the client a comprehensive service design package, which included a strategic roadmap for future product development. Included were:

• Specifications for physical and digital product prototypes
• Detailed descriptions of novel business models
• Customer profiles
• Visualized examples of how potential customers would interact with various aspects of the service

Develop products to address the challenges of aging adults and their at-home caregivers

Support for seniors and their caregivers is presently fragmented and confusing, with multiple products and services on the market that only address a single issue. Caregivers are overwhelmed in their role, with little time to dedicate to themselves and their own self-care. And the cared-for face chronic health issues such as reduced mobility and incontinence. Consequently, the care partner relationship has significant informational, logistical, and emotional challenges not addressed by traditional products. PARC’s client was looking for a better way to address these issues simultaneously through various products, with continence care being a key focus.

User- and business-centric approach to innovation

PARC brought to their client a unique mix of user experience design, business models and technology expertise. Through their rigorous design-led exploratory process and technological innovations, PARC could help their client create new business opportunities that would provide the greatest market impact with minimal risk, and improve the lives of caregivers and the people in their care.

DESIGN-LED, RIGOROUS EXPLORATION OF ACCESSIBLE MARKETS (DREAM)

Collaborative concept generation workshops

PARC and their client conducted extensive background research on the current caregiving landscape to investigate new emerging technology and identified product and service concepts to evaluate further.

User experience probes

PARC developed an iterative, hypothesis-driven research technique to rapidly evaluate two novel concepts around the care partner relationship—one highly pragmatic and one a major unsolved challenge. PARC and client resolved to explore how their vision of a new integrated product-service ecosystem, driven by inexpensive household sensors and AI, could impact these challenges.

• PARC interviewed care partner pairs to gain insight into their goals, frustrations and needs.
• Based on interview findings, a series of testable value and experience hypotheses were developed around the following concepts:
  • Contextual, personalized information
  • Reframing care partner perceptions of how they care together

Simulated experience probes in the form of a “care kit” were deployed to rigorously test their hypotheses.

• Care kits contained real products for each individual to use, sensors, personalized information and prescribed activities.
• Each probe elicited realistic responses from end users—allowing the client to understand the impact of the proposed business ideas and technologies without building them in their entirety.

The probe study was iteratively repeated to test additional hypotheses.

Technology exploration

Throughout the probe process, PARC explored solutions for:

• In-home activity sensing
• Personalized information selection
• Automatic selection and reordering of personal care products

Technologies investigated included:

• Deep learning-based computer vision for activity identification
• Product containers that knew when their contents were being consumed
• Personal care information selection and delivery

Integrated AI-driven product-service platform

Based on the research findings, PARC recommended a holistic approach that used digital technologies paired with AI-selected suites of consumer products from the client’s existing product line. This integrated product-service solution would inform, recommend, empower and create moments of deeper meaningful connection for care partners. It would also help transform the client’s relationship with its users from purely transactional interactions with consumable products to an extended, supportive service experience with continuous interaction and feedback.

Comprehensive service design package

PARC provided the client a comprehensive service design package, which included a strategic roadmap for future product development. Included were:

• Specifications for physical and digital product prototypes
• Detailed descriptions of novel business models
• Customer profiles
• Visualized examples of how potential customers would interact with various aspects of the service