CarePredict | Tempo

Wear, Hear, and Predict

CarePredict started as an idea, from founder Satish Movva, who was simply looking for ways to help care for his parents and provide himself peace of mind. Founded in 2013, CarePredict’s mission has grown into a movement to transform this rapidly growing, underserved market and empower better care for all seniors. Today they focus on identifying patterns in the daily lives of seniors that can predict declines in their health and enable early intervention.

On the front lines of this tracking is their device, Tempo.  Tempo is a wrist-worn wearable tech that houses a sophisticated array of sensors able to detect an individual’s activities of daily living and location, while providing a touch-button call system for real-time communication with caregivers. It senses activities like eating, drinking, bathing, grooming, brushing teeth, toileting, walking, sitting, sleeping and the list goes on. It also knows in what rooms those activities are occurring. It has a single integrated assistance button that when pressed, an alert is sent to caregivers showing the exact location of the senior as well as a 2-way audio communication between the caregiver and the senior for additional support. The operation is simple and convenient by design. 

Take note of one key feature: the Tempo is 100% screenless.

To keep the user experience as clean as possible, Tempo’s interaction happens solely through audio cues heard through an onboard speaker.

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The Challenge

Tempo’s challenge is unique, the device is wrist-worn and sleek, so internal creating space for large speakers and amplification isn’t an option. The end user typically is elderly and often suffers from presbycusis (age-related hearing loss) which affects the highest frequencies first then gradually works its way lower over time. This is also the first sonic touchpoint that Tempo will have with users, so the strategy behind the Sonic UX is key in establishing the device’s sonic identity.

We measured the standard age-related hearing loss against the frequency response of the Tempo to identify the sweet spot for the Sonic UX.

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Insights

To develop tones and textures we must first understand the brand’s emotional characteristics as well as the expectations of the user. Through stakeholder interviews, consumer feedback, and independent research we identified that the CarePredict brand and the consumer emotionally intersected with the feelings of reassurance, peace of mind, and the calm comforts of home.  The Tempo itself conveyed a sense of safety as well as incredible convenience.

With our user wearing the Tempo everyday the opportunity for Alarm Fatigue is high. Alarm Fatigue occurs when a user is exposed to a large number or frequent alerts/alarms causing desensitization. This leads to longer response times and possibly missing them all together. Rather than create sounds that acted as alarms or alerts, we created melodies that elicit responses from users through empathy, harmony and (occasionally) dissonance.

Directional Development

Once we gained the understanding of CarePredict’s emotional characteristics, we then created a series of directions that aptly conveyed the desired emotional responses. The directions were reviewed by a consumer panel to gain insights into alarm fatigue, communication accuracy, and emotional response. With the feedback from stakeholders reassured by the insights from the consumers, production could begin on the best performing direction from a KPI as well as qualitative perspective.

Production

All 200+ sounds created for the tempo were developed and processed through the device itself. This allowed for fast decision making in terms of tone, texture, mix, and loudness.

Research

By utilizing research throughout the process, we created a Sonic UX that brought the CarePredict sonic identity to life and communicated specific, vital messages to its users through sound alone.