Diary for Two: Designing Diary Study to Unveil Caregiver and Care-Recipient Relationships

A diary is a tool that can capture the dynamics of caregiver and care-recipient relationships to identify potential issues for HCI design. On a project working with Dr. Christina Chung and Alex Foster, we conducted a diary study on a caregiver and care-recipient dyad.

Intro

• HCI has increasingly focused on developing technologies that support informal caregivers and their relationships with care recipients [1].

• Diary studies have been employed in family-focused technology to understand participant needs from the in-situ situations and behaviors from their life[4].

• Previous research has undertaken numerous efforts to support care relationships, underscoring their diversity and complexity [2].

• However, utilizing diaries with participants, particularly in contexts involving two people, can introduce complexities. This leads to the research question: How do we design a diary method that captures the nuanced dynamics within these relationships, guiding the co-design session?

Methods

Thisprompt focuses on detailing emotions and feelings towards the care-recipient.

• Two weeks diary with two pairs of dyads

• Every day, the caregiver received a link to the Qualtrics survey (see right figure for example)
  

Results

1. The diary prompt: “What is one thing either of you feel stressed/ challenged?” identifies challenges in the Caregiver-Care Recipient Relationship “So with dementia, it’s much harder for you to remember when you last drank water, and it’s also hard for you to recognize when you’re thirsty...if I’m not keeping track of how much water you’re drinking, or if I’m not constantly reminding you or persuading you to take a sip of water that you could very easily end up in the ER again” (Jason, 28/M reflecting Linda,91/F) Stacy (51/F) revealed her biggest challenge with her mother, Mia (79/F), was “Hard to make Mom happy just being here - everything is about when she is going home.”
   

2. Challenges for Completing the Diary Stacy: “A little bit like it was kind of hard to find a good time to fit this in a very structured schedule, nice to be able to do things consistently...my memory isn’t perfect” Jason: “That was surprisingly tricky ... you gotta get up in the morning to...check on lunch and then come home...the biggest hurdle is just me remembering to get in there."

Results

To optimize this approach, diaries should:

• Focus on stress or challenging problems

• Ensure a positive conclusion to prevent negative emotions post-completion.

• Reduce the overall time

• Fast clickable Likert scale for immediate feedback.

• Incorporate more reminders (another email or text message) for the caregiver at the end of the day.
  

(This work was presented in the CRA-WP workshop 2024)