Consumer Case Study
Circle Connect: Voice, Choice, Reassurance
An accessible companion for cognitive support, emotional reassurance, and everyday connection through gentle technology
4
Interviews and observations with target users
2
Primary Personas
14
Story board concepts
3 out of 4
Thought the concepts reduced anxiety
Project Details
Client
Internal concept exploration (Circle Connect)
Duration
2 days
Skillset
UX Research UI Design Journey Mapping Prompt-based prototyping
Tools & Stakeholders
Tools
Figma Boords CoPilot Miro Perplexity
Key Stakeholders
• Older adults with mild cognitive challenges
• Carers and family members
• Just me — solo designer, researcher, and prototyper
Case study details
Older adults living with dementia, mild cognitive decline, or anxiety around technology often avoid digital tools because they fear forgetting steps or making mistakes. This leads to missed connections, skipped reminders, and reduced confidence in daily routines.
Added to this is the issue of loneliness, which grows as abilities decline and loved ones are no longer present. Without simple, supportive ways to connect, people risk isolation at the very time they most need reassurance and companionship.
Circle Connect is positioned as a responsive, accessible companion that adapts to voice, text, or touch. It provides gentle prompts, emotional reassurance, and clear options to help people feel capable, connected, and calm while engaging with technology.
Here’s how the journey unfolded:
1. Desktop Research and Lived Experience
My starting point was research and analysis, combining both formal methods and lived experience. Even though this current case study was a quick exploration, my understanding of the problem comes from much earlier. During my university studies, I spent significant time working with elderly people, holding training sessions, creating reminders and shortcuts in different ways to help them remember or make daily tasks easier. Often, I would print out instructions with large fonts and images to show them what to do step‑by‑step. I also drew on experiences with relatives who faced similar difficulties. These years of exposure gave me a strong foundation for designing with empathy and awareness of real needs.
Through this, I realised that while printed guides and manual aids were helpful, they were static. With new technology, we may be able to create something more adaptive and personalised - support that is available when users feel lost or frustrated, guiding them in the moment rather than relying on memory alone.
To build on that foundation, I conducted desktop research and benchmarking using tools like Perplexity to explore existing medication reminder systems, dementia‑friendly apps, and accessibility standards. I also ran interviews with older adults and carers, which reinforced the recurring pain point: anxiety about forgetting medical instructions or medication schedules.
This combination of lived experience, design research, and desktop research showed me that while many tools offer reminders, few integrate recording, playback, and multi‑modal interaction (voice, text, touch) in a way that truly reduces anxiety and reassures users. Identifying this gap was the reason I continued with Circle Connect as a concept case study, using prompts and rapid prototyping to explore solutions.
2. Storyboards and Early Concepts
To ground Circle Connect in real user scenarios, I created storyboards and early concept flows using a mix of tools:
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Boords for structuring narrative sequences and visualising how a user might move through a reminder flow.
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Miro for mapping emotional states, accessibility needs, and interaction touchpoints alongside the storyboard frames.
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Copilot to augment the process with prompt‑driven ideation, helping me generate variations of flows and refine the language used in instructions and reminders.
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These early artefacts allowed me to:
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Visualise how an elderly user or carer would experience Circle Connect in everyday contexts (e.g., after a doctor’s visit).
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Capture emotional cues — moments of reassurance, frustration, or relief — and test how design elements could respond.
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Iterate quickly, moving from narrative sketches to wireframes without losing sight of the human story behind the interface.
By combining storyboarding, emotional mapping, and prompt‑driven prototyping, I was able to create a set of early concepts that not only tested functionality but also validated the tone of support and reassurance that Circle Connect aims to deliver.
3. Personas
Personas were developed from these insights, representing individuals with mild dementia, acquired brain injury, and very low digital confidence. Each persona captured daily routines, emotional needs, and barriers to technology, guiding design decisions toward simplicity and reassurance.
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Mild Dementia – individuals who experience memory lapses, need reassurance, and benefit from simple prompts.
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Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) – users with cognitive processing challenges who require step‑by‑step guidance and error recovery.
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Low Digital Confidence – older adults who feel anxious about technology, fear “breaking” something, and prefer voice or very simple controls.
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Socially Isolated – people experiencing loneliness due to declining abilities or absence of loved ones, needing easy ways to connect.
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Carer/Support Role – family members or professional carers who configure the system, interpret behaviours, and provide feedback on usability.
4. Prototype: Reminder Flow (First Pass)
This is a deliberately rough prototype; a “shitty first draft” built in Figma Make using a combination of Copilot‑generated prompts and manual tweaks. It doesn’t fully capture the emotional tone or layout precision I’m aiming for, but it was quick to produce and good enough to test core interactions.
The first MVP focused on recording a doctor’s visit, built in medium‑ to high‑fidelity wireframes. This prototype demonstrated how Circle Connect could capture instructions and provide reminders later, reducing anxiety about forgetting. A generative AI layer ran in the background to guide the user step‑by‑step, offering voice, text, or touch interaction so they were never stuck. It also supported creating a medication reminder and returning later to listen to the recording again for reassurance.
Why This Flow Was Selected
I chose to prototype the recording and reminder flow because it represents the most critical pain point uncovered in interviews: anxiety about forgetting medical instructions or medication schedules. By testing this flow first, I can quickly validate whether Circle Connect’s combination of recording, playback, and timed reminders actually reduces that anxiety.
It’s also a flow that combines multiple interaction modes (voice, text, touch), making it a strong candidate for early usability testing with elderly users who have diverse accessibility needs.
5. Next steps
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Generate additional versions of the prototype with refined prompts, layouts, and interaction flows
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Conduct usability testing with real users to validate clarity, emotional tone, and accessibility
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Explore security considerations around storing sensitive health information
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Assess ethical AI principles to ensure transparency, user control, and responsible automation
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Extend desktop and design research to benchmark against comparable reminder systems and accessibility standards
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Experiment with alternative prototyping tools (e.g., Lovable) to achieve higher fidelity and more adaptive flows
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I will keep this case study updated as I learn more and continue building out the prototype, documenting both design iterations and research insights along the way.
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Begin shaping a design system that captures accessibility heuristics, emotional reassurance cues, and consistent interaction patterns, ensuring future iterations are scalable and inclusive
My efforts
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Drew on lived experience and supporting relatives, including holding training sessions, creating reminders and shortcuts, and designing printed instructions with large fonts and images to help elderly users remember tasks.
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Conducted desktop research (using tools like Perplexity) to benchmark existing reminder systems, dementia‑friendly apps, and accessibility standards.
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Ran design research interviews with older adults and carers to validate pain points and uncover emotional needs.
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Crafted and iterated Copilot prompts to generate screens in Figma Make, testing hypotheses about layout, hierarchy, and reassurance cues.
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Created storyboards and early concepts in Boords and Miro, mapping emotional states and user journeys to ensure flows captured both functionality and tone.
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Built and annotated a style guide to enforce consistency and begin shaping a design system that foregrounds accessibility and emotional reassurance.
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Explored alternative prototyping tools (e.g., Lovable) to achieve higher fidelity and more adaptive flows when Figma Make outputs fell short
Circle Connect is for people who want to use tech but struggle with short‑term memory, low digital literacy, or never learned these skills earlier. It offers reassurance and adaptive support when they feel lost or frustrated.
With GenAI, we can now prototype quickly and spend more time in Discovery — testing whether a tool truly adds value before investing in full development. The key learning remains: understanding the right problem is essential. Fast prototyping may remix the process, but users always come first, and depth of insight is what makes solutions meaningful.
About the image: The Double Diamond sketch signals how practice is shifting — prototyping earlier, AI accelerating discovery, and “slow design” bringing back depth. For me, it’s less about reinventing the diagram and more about showing that solving problems starts with understanding them.