Khayal · Care, thoughtfully consideredFamily Care CoordinationKhayal · Care, thoughtfully consideredFamily Care Coordination
Khayal
Making caregiving visible, shared & sustainable.
Type of work
Academic Project
Role
UX Research & Design
Duration
1 Month
Team
Self + 6
What we set out to understand
This was an academic exploration focused on understanding caregiver burden and designing responsibly within complex social systems.
As a student design team, we examined the gap between “shared” care and lived responsibility to understand how care actually functions inside Indian families, and where existing support systems are failing caregivers.
1.1Starting with compassion
Why taking care of the caregiver matters.
Margaret Mead — American cultural anthropologist and author
“What is the earliest sign of civilization? A healed femur.”
A healed bone in early human remains signified something radical: someone chose to care.
Civilisation did not begin with tools or weapons, it began with support. Caregivers embody that same social infrastructure today. Designing for them strengthens the system that holds families together.
“It takes a village to care for a loved one”
Caring for an elderly family member involves more than physical help. It often includes:
Medical Coordination
Tracking appointments, meds, and follow-ups.
Documentation & Decisions
Managing reports, prescriptions, insurance, and consent.
Personal Trade-offs
Balancing work, family, and personal health.
Professional Support
Finding, hiring, and coordinating trained caregivers.
While providing care is culturally expected to be shared, it often drifts to one person, without explicit discussion or support.
Khayal as a Care Coordination System
Rather than treating caregiving as a set of isolated tasks, we explored Khayal as an ecosystem that supports both:
1Logistical complexity
2Human and emotional strain
MOMENTS WE FOCUSED ON
Quotes synthesized from primary interviews with family caregivers.
Community & support
“Somebody who could understand me and just hear me out.”
Access curated content & create/join communities to organise events, share resources and talk to people with similar experiences.
Care recipient details
“Everything is in my head”
Store & organise documents by dependent and make sharing tasks with family easier.
Services
“I’ll have to quit my work or if we don’t have a way to manage without me working, then I have to hire someone.”
Browse Certified Caregiver Matches for focused attention at home, or discover local care centres close to you.
Task sharing
“Everyone is well-meaning, but when you’re the one nearby, all the responsibility falls on you.”
Make daily tasks visible and share with an extended care network to build healthy boundaries around care.
Home Screen
A shared starting point for tasks, services and care coordination.
Services Screen
Caregiver matching and nearby care-centre support.
Community Screen
A space for resources, shared experiences and support.
Accounts Screen
A home for profile, care-recipient details and supporting controls.
Understanding a caregiver’s reality
Recognising that caregiving affects emotional wellbeing, routines, social life, and finances beyond physical assistance, we combined caregiver conversations, surveys, and secondary research to validate patterns across sources.
Quantitative + qualitative data
These findings were consolidated into a structured research report documenting our methodology, analysis, and key insights, which informed the direction of our design exploration.
Caregivers aren’t overwhelmed by caring, they’re overwhelmed by coordinating.
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INSIGHT #2
Care is emotionally shared, but coordination often falls on one person.
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INSIGHT #3
Emotional support works best when embedded in logistics
These insights helped us identify opportunity areas where design could meaningfully support caregivers.
Hearing from caregivers
We explored multiple ways a digital product could support caregivers in managing responsibilities and coordinating care.
Five early concepts were developed and shared with caregivers to understand what felt useful, realistic, and relevant to their daily lives.
Concept testing
Their feedback helped us identify which ideas resonated most and which ones needed refinement or deprioritisation.
WHAT WE PRIORITISED+
Shared visibility, not shared confusion
Caregivers liked being able to see care details, documents, and responsibilities in one place, especially when multiple people were involved.
Flexible support, on their terms
Caregivers responded positively to professional help options that could adapt to changing schedules. On-demand support was seen as a way to regain personal time and flexibility.
Someone that hears them out
Caregivers appreciated solutions that acknowledged stress and provided a community for them to share and bond through similar experiences.
WHAT WE SET ASIDE−
Purely task-focused solutions
Concepts that addressed only the logistics without acknowledging emotional load felt incomplete.
Rigid care plans
Caregivers found rigid, long-term care plans unrealistic; they liked concepts that adapt to changing health, work, and family needs.
Giving Form to Care
Using our research insights and testing feedback, we established a structured information architecture and user flows to give shape to Khayal’s caregiver support vision.
App structure & key flows
Bringing it together
INSIGHT #1
Show care details & responsibilities
Centralised care records
Caregivers want one place to access and manage care information, rather than relying on scattered messages or memory.
Shared view of tasks
Caregivers want an easy way for family members to see ongoing responsibilities and step in when needed.
INSIGHT #2
Enable flexible support
On-demand help
Caregivers want to find trustworthy in-home help when required, without long-term commitment or loss of control.
Find care centres near you
Caregivers want accessible respite options close to home.
INSIGHT #3
Build space for emotional support
Access tailored resources
Caregivers want guidance that feels timely and personal, that responds to both the patient’s needs and their own.
Start / join a community
Caregivers want to feel heard and understood. They need a space to share experiences, ask questions, and express stress without judgment.
Continuing the Conversation
The research pointed towards a potential direction for caregiving: making care more visible, easier to share, and more supportive for the person carrying the coordination.
WHAT THE RESEARCH OPENED UP
A care coordination system that brings shared responsibilities, flexible support, and emotional care into the same experience.
What to carry forward
Future exploration would need to build trust around privacy, reliable care services, and the different roles families play in caregiving.
How My Thinking Evolved
From Empathy to Compassion
I began by designing with empathy, but along the way I understood the difference between feeling for someone and designing to actively support them.
From Product Thinking to Systems Thinking
Initially, we framed the solution as an app. Over time, I realised the interface was only a vehicle. If I approached this again, I would define the system first with roles, behaviors, incentives and let the product emerge from that foundation.
From Feature Validation to Emotional Impact
While testing concepts, I would go beyond usability and treat emotional safety as a primary constraint, asking consistently if a feature would reduce stress or amplify it.
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