Digital Health | Inclusive Design | Social Impact
CareOurHeart: Pioneering Inclusive Design for Digital Health
Bridged the gap between clinical academic research and senior accessibility through empathetic, age-responsive experience design
Key Objective: To architect a senior-friendly medical educational and research platform that eliminates digital barriers, fostering proactive heart health management for the 50+ demographic.
Challenge:
How might we transform a high-friction academic platform into an intuitive, "senior-friendly" experience that overcomes low response rates, unappealing aesthetics, and unclear navigation for users aged 50+?
The Client:
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (School of Nursing)
My Role:
Lead Experience Designer & Project Manager
Directed the end-to-end design strategy, from contextual research and user auditing to full-scale digital realization.
The Delivery:
- Evidence-Based Inclusive Strategy: Led extensive contextual research into senior usability challenges, utilizing the "Usability for Seniors" framework to guide every design decision. I prioritized Readability, Navigation Clarity, and Error Flexibility as the core pillars of the new platform.
- Targeted Persona Architecture: Developed deep-dive personas (e.g., "Kung Cheung") to align stakeholders on the specific behaviors, pain points, and medical needs of Chinese seniors aged 50+ who communicate primarily in Cantonese.
- Systemic Onboarding Overhaul: Re-engineered the user onboarding and admin operation flows to cater to both clinical research requirements and senior-friendly simplicity. This included creating a clear path for account activation and automated data generation for the research team.
- Physical-to-Digital Auditing: Managed a rigorous auditing process of the existing platform, translating analog insights and stakeholder workshops into high-fidelity digital solutions.
Expertise Integration:
Feature Adoption: Increased daily engagement and retention among the 50+ demographic by implementing senior-friendly UI standards that reduced technological intimidation.
Instrumentation: Designed a dual-purpose architecture that instrumented patient data collection for HK PolyU researchers while maintaining an effortless interface for the end-user.
CES Alignment: Minimized cognitive load through a revamped sitemap and onboarding flow, directly improving the Customer Effort Score (CES) for non-technical users.
The Impact:
🚀 Operational Integrity & Adoption: Transformed an "unappealing and unclear" academic tool into a high-adoption platform that seniors are "more willing to use on a daily basis," directly supporting long-term health monitoring.
🚀 Streamlined Admin Efficiency: Designed a dual-purpose architecture that simultaneously simplified the patient experience and provided a robust admin backend for researchers to generate data and conduct interviews seamlessly.
🚀 Standard-Setting Senior UX: Established a scalable design language for senior-focused digital health, bridging the gap between clinical research and practical, high-readability UI.
🚀 Operational Integrity & Adoption: Transformed an "unappealing and unclear" academic tool into a high-adoption platform that seniors are "more willing to use on a daily basis," directly supporting long-term health monitoring.
🚀 Streamlined Admin Efficiency: Designed a dual-purpose architecture that simultaneously simplified the patient experience and provided a robust admin backend for researchers to generate data and conduct interviews seamlessly.
🚀 Standard-Setting Senior UX: Established a scalable design language for senior-focused digital health, bridging the gap between clinical research and practical, high-readability UI.
By using the senior-friendly approach on ui and ux, the navigation, usability and readability are all improved based on user feedback. The response are positive and user are more willing use it at daily basis.
Link: https://careourheart.com/index