Introducing Blue And Caregiver Support Technologies

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article on why we had to let go of our product’s first persona, Caroline. Caroline was wonderful, but introducing a female, humanoid robot as a submissive, servile entity was troubling. The last thing our company wants to do is reinforce one of the most stark inequalities in care - the fact that the vast majority of family caregivers are women.

So, we set out to identify a persona that could be all of the following:

• Advanced yet familiar
• Welcoming and warm yet secure
• Friendly, but not incompetent
• Clearly a robot, but not a scary one
• Endlessly energetic
• Non-judgmental
• Known for its organizational skills
• Without a declared gender

The trickiest (and most frustrating) part about this was that Caroline checked ALL of those boxes but the last. And, as is clear by now, getting that last box right is pretty tricky in the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI). At first, it felt like getting every question right on a test in high school, but getting a zero because you forgot your name, or the date, or some other seemingly nitpicky thing… You might have cursed your teacher then, but later in life you realize that those details matter. Caroline didn’t deserve a zero, and maybe not even an F… but she wasn’t passable in a really meaningful way.

We thought about the idea of having a gender neutral, humanoid bot, but, honestly, we are not going to pretend that we have a full enough understanding of how people who fall outside the gender binary would feel about that. While we would have tried to design the persona empathetically, I’m sure our attempt would have come up woefully short. Big teams are taking on this challenge as their sole purpose, after all, and producing really progressive, interesting things like Q.

So, we went in a new direction. I’m thrilled to introduce you to Blue, The Community Assistant. Blue was designed in collaboration with Toronto based illustrator Jen Backman, and is based on herding dogs like the Border Collie or Australian Shepherd. We chose these dogs because they are:

Extremely intelligent

Ever notice how collies are always contending for championships at agility contests, or learning tricks, or even able to play Jenga? These dogs are quick learners, a crucial feature of an assistant - powered by AI or otherwise.

Endlessly energetic

Speaking of agility contests, these pups can MOVE, and any owner of one will tell you — they never seem to get tired. This is a great characteristic for a digital assistant.

Herding expertise

Rallying a village of support around a caregiver is a big job. It involves coordination of busy people, constant checking and confirmation, and a pleasant demeanor.

In our overall identity, we now signify caregivers with gold instead of pink, and their supporters get a new shade of light blue. In lending our new character both, we signal that the assistant is there to help the whole community. With gold under the ear to listen to caregivers, blue where major muscles would be on a dog to show the community’s strength, and a robotic grey underside, Blue is custom built for this situation.

So that’s the assistant, but what about the parent company? “Unburden Care” was a very appropriate name for the investor crowd. It just made sense. Spend some time with caregivers, however, and you realize very quickly — they don’t see it as a “burden”, and almost recoil at the word. To call it that makes it seem like a mostly negative thing, when Caregivers actually take significant pride in, and even derive satisfaction and purpose from, their responsibility. Sure, it’s a huge amount of work, and often a very painful experience, but it’s considered a responsibility, not a burden. This was another mistake we felt compelled to fix. As a result, we’re going to keep it simple and just say what we do for now. No puns, no missing vowels. We produce Caregiver Support Technologies.

So, as we progress into user testing (message me if you are or know a caregiver who might want to try it out), we will remember a key lesson from Caroline and Unburden Care - nothing about our product or company is sacred. From features to the persona, we need to be willing to adapt to the needs of caregivers and their communities. We’ve been showing Blue to our friends, and many people do assume Blue to be male. We’re not convinced that this is a problem - frankly, for the reasons we decided against Caroline, I’m more comfortable with people mistakenly assuming male than I would be with them mistakenly assuming female - but we’re willing to be told why we’re wrong. What do you think of Blue? Let us know!

This article is also published on Medium.