ERbuddy

Improving Patient-Caregiver Communication for Healthcare Management

My Role

Research & Insights lead

UX Designer

Project Management

Tools

Figma, Miro, Google Sheets, Zoom

Responsibilities

Developed research plan and interview script, recruited participants, moderated 7 interviews, synthesized data through affinity mapping, facilitated client communications, designed visuals i.e. lo-fi & hi-fi designs

Client

The context

Tl;dr

ERbuddy is a personal healthcare management platform designed for patients and their caregivers helping families manage chronic conditions and access critical health information.

However, ERbuddy fell short in one critical area: communication. Families weren’t using the platform to stay connected. They were still relying on texts, phone calls, and even handwritten notes to coordinate care.

We partnered with Pratt Institute’s DX Center and uncovered the root of this disconnect through rigorous in-depth research and 0-1 product development to design solutions that ultimately improved communication between patients and caregivers.

The Goals

Scoping Project Goals

After reviewing early user feedback on their beta mobile app, we arrived at a final scope in mind with the client and set our to uncover greater insight into 3 key areas:

Centralized Information Access

Ensure essential health information surfaces at the right time

Strengthen Two-Way Communication

Enable Clear and secure communication amongst patients and caregivers

Improve Usability and Accessibility

Design an intuitive and accessible interface that minimizes friction for all users

Final Designs

Designing Outcomes to Support Patients and Caregivers

In-depth research and 0-1 product development informed the final designs of ERbuddy, introducing features that centralize critical information for patients and caregivers across varying roles, alongside a dedicated symptoms and feelings logbook for patients.

The result is a unified experience that helps both groups manage care more confidently—reducing stress through streamlined access to essential health information and seamless communication.

How did we get here exactly?

Research

I defined key questions and directed research activities

For this project, it was extremely important that we took time to understand the overall healthcare landscape and the patient-caregiver dynamic. Our team conducted desk research and competitive analysis to build our background knowledge.

Our research revealed a gap in at-home care, providing an opportunity to expand into untapped markets.

We leveraged what we learned from the competitor analysis to then conduct an app audit for ERbuddy to align with business needs as well. Namely, we reviewed the current information architecture and defined four existing task flows:

To get a deeper dive on the landscape of healthcare management, we conducted 8 structured interviews to:

Understand how patients and caregivers currently communicate with each other

Identify pain points with caregiving, medication management, and tracking medical records

Following the interviews, we were able to organize the qualitative data into an affinity map and group our findings based on common themes, revealing larger patterns:

Managing health alone can be daunting. Gaps in medical history access can make decision-making stressful and difficult.

Assessing urgency is difficult and stressful.

Patients want a way to keep track of their own health while having caregivers involved for assistance.

Caregivers want a centralized system so that information is not scattered and is shared with all related users.

From this foundation, we developed empathy maps and personas that captured not just demographics, but the emotions, frustrations, and goals of our users.

These tools became touchstones throughout our process, guiding us to design with clarity, compassion, and purpose.

Meet the users we designed for…

ERbuddy's target audience are senior patients and caregivers.

Click cards for better viewing

Defining solutions

Bridging insights to explore opportunities

We identified the need for new solutions to fully fulfill user needs. We identified 3 main design challenges as goals based on our research insights:

How Might We make it easier for caretakers to assess all the medication data and appointments at one place?

How Might We help multiple caregivers sync information they acquire from patients and PCPs so that they are on the same page?

How Might We encourage patients to keep track of and log how they feel mentally and physically so that their caregivers are more aware of their status?

In order to focus our efforts on an MVP, we applied the MoSCoW Method, which led us to prioritize 3 proposed features.

These received positive feedback from the client and led us to moving forward with the first two features.

Role-Switching

Allow users to toggle between patient and caregiver views

Symptoms and Feelings Log

Enable patients to track and share their physical and mental status

Note-taking during doctor's visits

Help users capture and share visit information

Ideating solutions

Iterating and developing solutions

Having defined the feature solutions, we took the opportunity to explore designs through low-fidelity sketching and wireframing. We focused on conceptual thinking and core elements to quickly visualize ideas and bridge into more detailed designs later.

While the third feature was beyond developer scope at the time, I explored AI features to address this with the client in later consultancy work.

Designing Erbuddy

I created key screens and prototyped one main feature

We approached the solutions top-down and ensured that the client could implement our designs in the future by creating an updated information architecture and task flows that clearly identified all screens involved.

Following collaborative sketching and discussion, we aligned on the screen structure, then I designed key screens for the logbook feature in medium fidelity. We wireframed and prototyped just enough to test key functionality so that we could gather feedback early and iterate efficiently.

Select for closer view

Overarching information architecture of the new ERbuddy app

Patient symptoms & feelings logbook complete with multimodal entries, data visulization, and tags

User testing

Testing revealed critical gaps in workflow flexibility for caregivers and information clarity

I recruited participants and we conducted a total of 7 moderated usability tests that ran 45-60 minutes at the mid-fidelity stage to validate our design thinking before investing into refinement.

Interview Script Found Here

Usability testing session done on mobile

findings consolidated VIa rainbow sheet

Through task-based scenarios and follow-up interviews, we identified 5 critical usability issues:

The caregiver view did not clearly distinguish between patient and personal information
Section labels were too ambiguous, making it difficult for users to locate what they needed
Logging symptoms and feelings followed inconsistent patterns
The medication logging feature offered limited flexibility for users' varying needs
Switching between accounts was limited, disrupting the overall workflow

These findings directly shaped our redesigns, namely, informing the visual communication adjusting interaction triggers, and fleshing out specific features.

Final Designs

With the foundation solid, we moved into the final design

By implementing recommendations and incorporating a new style guide, we finalized our designs into high-fidelity solutions.

Creating a style guide means implementing ERbuddy’s brand identity in the format of interface elements, representing the brand while ensuring functionality and accessibility through colors, fonts, and component layouts.

View Final Prototype

Presenting the new ERbuddy's app…

feature #1

Centralized information for multi-roled caregivers

Caregivers needed a way to manage to manage all the busy roles they were juggling and look after both their own health and their patients. We introduced role-switching that allowed caregivers to:

Monitor patient status from their homepage.

Take actions on behalf of patients without logging out.

Manage their own health information in the same app

Toggle between caregiver and patient viewing via menu

Demo video on how caregivers can access both patient and personal information

Keeping in mind!

Patient Homepage

Usability tests confirmed homepage as central hub design choice

Users instinctively returned here to start tasks rather than using other navigation. We designed multiple ways to reach an action

"I would try to do everything on the homepage." - Participant

Timely actions made accessible

Burying reminders in the calendar meant users missed them. We placed them on the homepage too.

Recurring symptoms reduce logging time for chronic conditions that flare regularly.

Quick-log buttons for entries on the go. 'Details' links to comprehensive tracking.

Customized messages makes health tracking feel less clinical and more personalized.

Caregiver Homepage

Prior testing showed that users struggled with vague section titles, forcing them to guess where information lived.

We replaced clinical language with clear, relationship-based labels, instead of 'Patients' to reflect how caregivers actually think.

Monitor patient trends at a glance

Early stage interviews revealed untimely communication gaps in patient symptoms, leading to potential emergency situations.

We created a summarized view of diagnosis, medications, symptoms, and mood to help caregivers spot patterns and prioritize care.

Caregivers track their own health

Caregivers can also track their own health without switching between 2 accounts or leaving the app, providing a needed means of managing multiple roles.

Unified view of all reminders

We designed for consolidated information, where both patient and caregiver reminders can be found, eliminating the need to check multiple calendars.

Caregiver account switching flow

Patient Homepage

Side Menu- switch account

Caregiver's account

Patient summary

feature #2

Symptoms and Feelings Logbook

They tell me certain symptoms they have a couple days after the fact. So it's hard to kind of understand if it’s a serious thing or not. My mom has been having some heart palpitations, but she won't tell me when she's having it. She'll tell me after she's had it.

Two critical pieces of information surfaced from the data from our interviews:

Caregivers struggled to understand what patients were experiencing day-to-day, making it hard to provide appropriate support or communicate with doctors,

Patients wanted to lead an independent life without feeling like their burdening their caregivers

By addressing these significant concerns, we designed a logbook for up-to-date easy logging that captures both:

Symptoms

Timestamped entries with location, photos, and multi-select options: shareable with caregivers or exportable for appointments.

Feelings

Text or voice notes with AI-generated coping suggestions and weekly pattern tracking.

Demo video on how users can log symptoms and feelings

Symptoms Log

Symptoms grouped by time of day help caregivers and doctors spot patterns

Users were inputting different information due to copywriting.

'Where did you feel this symptom?' confused users so we changed it to 'Where were you?' to clarify.

Feelings Log

AI-generated coping suggestions offer immediate support for both symptoms and feelings entries.

Note: implementation requires careful attention to medical compliance and data privacy.

Outcomes

Both features and designs are under development

Team ERbuddy reached back out to me to offer an internship, where I worked with them and their development team to implement and further develop the app. Our expected outcomes include:

Lower medical error rates: Reduce the frequency of 'missed dose' errors through high-visibility, persistent notification patterns.
Decreased medical information search time during emergency situations: Through centralized and easy-access to sensitive information, caretakers don't have to spend extra time guessing where important information lives
Improve caregiver satisfaction: Help caregivers feel supported and not overwhelmed. (measured via SUS/ CSAT scales.)

The response to our efforts was met with overwhelming praise and excitement, and is proof of our outstanding design thinking.

"We will most certainly use your insights and hi-fidelity screens to enhance ERbuddy’s Care Managment Platform this summer."

– Ashish, ERbuddy Founder

"Your design team really did a wonderful job with your thorough research capturing the needs and gaps."

– Gurmeet, ERbuddy Founder

Review our final slidedeck

Takeaways

What I learned… and what I'll apply

The response to our efforts was met with overwhelming praise and excitement, and is proof of our outstanding design thinking.

The importance of documentation

Complex projects require thorough documentation, not just research insights, but the reasoning behind design decisions at every stage. This became essential in our rounds of improvement and during handoff.

Ensure Clear Scope Definition

Project management requires defined and shared objectives with both clients and internal teams. Communication and clear boundaries are worth the investment and prevent scope creep later on.

Lean into strengths, all hands on deck

Working with a new team can be exciting! Learning about each others' strengths and stepping in when needed helps uplift the whole team move towards a shared goal- everyone learns along the way!

In retrospect, this project was incredibly challenging but equally as rewarding. Healthcare is a complex landscape to navigate, but I learned so much along the way and would do it all over again.