Visual Design & Web Development

How can we support families of chronically ill children in their transition from hospital to home using multimedia products? This was the question my team of the Digital Society School got during my traineeship there. As a team we worked together closely with our partner: the Emma Children's Hospital, one of the partners who will be building "Het Jeroen Pit Huis". This care concept will support families of children with complex care by empowering and training them in a home setting. This way their transition home will become safer, easier and durable. The primary target audience for this project were the parents.

To answer this question we used the SCREAM method: a combination of the Design Thinking and SCRUM method. We started of with research which gave us insights for creating a stakeholders map and a transition journey. During a co-creating session with parents of children with complex care, doctors and other stakeholders we got to add a lot of new touchpoints in the transition journey of these families. Research methods we used were desk research, participant observations and interviews with parents of chronically ill children, their doctors, many more stakeholders like respite care workers, an ADL-assistant and other interventions. Because the families are inseparable from all these stakeholders who interact with them on a regular basis we tried to gather as much information from all of them to create something of added value.

Our first SCREAM sprint we created a research prototype: a role play game for parents, doctors and homecare takers. There were a lot of iterations on this prototype. The main changes were: integrating the iPad more into the game so players don't forget to use it, changing the icons so every player can relate, making it more playful by not making players write everything but also make them guess and draw. Just before we started planning using the prototype in a focus group, Covid-19 broke out and we had to delay and eventually drop the prototype. The partner however was very enthusiastic and maybe it will be used at het Jeroen Pit Huis in the future but among only parents who stay there.

Based on our research we decided that our solution prototype had to focus on social wellbeing, emotional wellbeing and care coordination. By focusing on these three pillars the quality of life for the whole family should be improved. After doing a lot of brainstorms, brainwriting, dot voting and using the AOKI & ViP Decontruct method we thought of making a mobile application. The smartphone is something everyone communicates through and especially during transitions it's a valid way to support these families. The user flow we created shows that we created four main features: family board, journal, goals and the wave page. The latter is connected to a smart lamp at the family's apartment at het Jeroen Pit Huis. It's based on the concept of "snoezelen" and makes sure the sick child is also incorporated into the solution of Family Centred Care.

During later sprints our prototype was being validated and refined by interviews and further research. We ended up with the Dutch name "Ons ZorgTeam". The journal feature disappeared while we focused more on the care coordination parts of the app: refining the goals page, adding tasks and a calendar function. Besides that the family board transformed into a timeline so everyone in the family's ZorgTeam is updated all the time about more than just the medical part of the child's life since all life domains affect the quality of life. The video below shows the video pitch that we made for the Digital Society School Showcase.