Bronze Digital Product · 2025
Alz Well Dementia Caregiving Ecosystem
by Akhil Patel
- Bronze A' Design Award 2025 in Digital Product
- CLIENT: Akhil Patel Designs
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 26,207
- Verification code 81769C74C7 · Verify this award
Colors
About Alz Well Dementia Caregiving Ecosystem
Alz Well is a digital care system for dementia caregivers and patients. The system includes a caregiver application with a dark mode for night use, a smart band with simple voice and one-tap controls, and a smart speaker with a large screen. Location tracking helps caregivers find patients who wander. Central scheduling with automated suggestions supports daily routines, and a wellness dashboard shows the state of patient and caregiver. Familiar voice options and contextual images help patients recall memories. Several dementia care needs are addressed in one system.
About the Bronze A' Design Award
Alz Well Dementia Caregiving Ecosystem is a Bronze A' Design Award winner, a highly prestigious recognition granted to outstanding designs distinguished by creativity, ingenuity, and astuteness. Bronze winners are amply skillful and strikingly creative artifacts that authenticate the vast experience, imagination, and resourcefulness of their designers. Alz Well Dementia Caregiving Ecosystem is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished object that is notably professional and innovative. This Bronze A' Design Award-winning design incorporates best practices in art, science, design, and technology, and is excellent for its attention to detail. Alz Well Dementia Caregiving Ecosystem splendidly satisfies needs, touches desires, charms feelings, and appeals to curiosity.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- AlzWell includes a caregiver app with dark mode for night use, a smart band for patients with simple voice and one-tap interactions, and a smart speaker with a large screen for voice commands and viewing memories. Key features: AI location tracking for wandering patients, central scheduling with AI suggestions, custom voice options for familiarity, and a wellness dashboard for caregivers. Patients gain confidence with contextual visuals, and the system simplifies caregiver-patient management.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- App: Responsive iOS devices (iPhone SE - iPhone 16Pro Max)
Wearable: 36mm diagonal rectangular display
Speaker: 10.2in diagonal display (1.8in depth) - Tags
- Dementia, Alzheimer's, Monitoring, Mobile, Caregivers, SmartDevices, Voice, AI
- Production Technology
- For the app: The product was designed in Figma. The animations are done in Rive/SwiftUI. The v1 prototype is built specifically for iOS using Swift UI and UIKit with some parts done in React. The voice interactions and routing are done via a Large Language Model (LLM).
Wearable & Speaker: V2 additions to the ecosystem are designed in Figma and will be built on open-source libraries. - Design Challenge
- The most difficult part of this challenge was to create something that had zero learning curve for the dementia patient (achieved via voice and one-click UI) and build a comprehensive monitoring system for the caregiver while integrating their current daily routine into the caregiving workflow.
- Research
- The research was divided into 2 parts:
1. User research: I talked to 3 dementia patients' family members and caregivers to understand how their lives and daily schedules are affected while caregiving.
2. Desk Research: Extensive secondary research was done from online sources like the CDC website, caregiving.org, Alz.org, etc. - Inspiration
- Dementia caregivers are the worst-hit caregivers in the healthcare industry:
- 17 billion hours of unpaid care (mostly family)
- 60% have extreme stress levels
- 1/6 quit their jobs
Dementia is also the most expensive disease in the USA: 2.8 Trillion USD estimated societal cost by 2030.
Alz Well aims to reduce stress for caregivers by helping them:
- effectively managing the symptoms & well-being of the patient
- having a smart care framework at their fingertips
- manage their day-to-day schedules along with the caregiving responsibility using AI
- get help in emergencies - Project Duration
- Initial research and design: 6 months (May 2022 - Jul 2022)
Development: Ongoing
Location: San Francisco, CA - Operation Flow
- Alz Well is the first system designed for both dementia caregivers and patients, improving both lives. It uses AI for wandering tracking and time management, a breakthrough in dementia care. Unlike other solutions that address one issue at a time, Alz Well manages multiple dementia challenges in one system (wandering, reminiscence, home tasks, monitoring). The tech is invisible to the patient, requiring no learning curve, making it effortless to use for both patients and caregivers.
