This design conjecture stems from my focus research insights into how the rehabilitation and recovery process for stroke patients is slow and incremental, and the speed at which the progress is made can affect the mental health and motivations of both the stroke-recovery patient as well as friends, family, and caregivers directly or indirectly involved. With the fact that there is so much information to keep track of and shuffle through, things such as what exercises need to be done at what frequency, what appointments need to be made, how much support someone need, etc. can be overwhelming for the patient, family members, friends, and caregivers.
One of the suggestions made specifically for caregivers of stroke-recovery patients is to keep a diary about what the patient did and be aware of the fact that they are providing support and aid in order to not become burdened with the thoughts of not doing enough. Family members that are primary caregivers in an informal way (unpaid) tend to feel obligated to help though this can cause stressors to emerge when time and resources are diverted to care and away from the caregiver’s other obligations such as finance, mental health, etc.
As such, this design conjecture is proposes an app tailored primarily to caregivers of stroke-recovery patients in order to document the various day-to-day tasks and see where they are providing support and give them assurance of the help they are providing. There are a lot of resources and information that is needed for caregivers such as debriefing from the medical team, rehabilitation exercises, and more that can be overwhelming for someone to keep track of. With this app, appointments can be kept track of, exercise procedures can be followed, resources can be referenced, etc. which will also help ease a caregiver’s stress about providing or assisting someone recovering from a stroke.
This app design conjecture is a preliminary thought to help in the reassurance of incremental progress being made through a visual means with secondary efforts in condensing the number of resources that needs to be shuffled through for the patient or caregiver. Whether or not an app is a viable means of doing this is up for consideration as stroke-patients may not be able to use it, and some stroke-recovery individuals may or may not have caregivers that the app is tailored towards.
