CareTunes for Families: Connecting ICU Patients and Their Families through Music

CareTunes for Families is a product-service system that connects Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients and their families through music. Families of ICU patients often experience distress and anxiety. They have the need for information, closeness, assurance, hope, control, and the need to support the patient. These emotional and social needs point to a need for stronger connection/connectedness, especially when the family is outside the hospital. In addition, the families experience many negative emotions such as uncertainty, worry, guilt, fear of loss, etc. Meanwhile, music is a powerful way to communicate emotions and meanings; it has the quality to fulfill the family’s social needs, emotional needs, and need for information at the same time. Therefore, the project aims to increase the connectedness for the families through music, and to bring them more positivity. A series of literature research and qualitative user research was carried out. The design also went through several iterations, inspired by insights gathered from user tests and interviews with experts. The final design of CareTunes for Families includes service design, user experience design, and music design. The design facilitates a meaningful connection between patients and families by transferring the patient’s mental activities and emotions through music streaming or music messages to the family. The music streaming enhances the sense of close presence of the patient, and the music messages enhance the feeling of intimacy and assurance, and reduces the sense of guilt. The product also enables the family to support the patient by sending back voice messages. The music in the design is automatically generated by the system. It comprises a theme melody of the patient, increasing intimacy and connectedness, and multiple other tracks which are connected to different data sources such as heart rate, brain waves and movements, creating variations in the music and a sense of realism. Moreover, the product gives the family the control in ending the music as an act of closure at the end of the service. The user evaluation of the design validates that the experience and the music together can indeed create connectedness and enhance positive emotions such as calmness, hope, and acceptance. The project leads to the following conclusions: (1) Music presents an advantage in building connectedness through an emotional experience and is unfitted to present technical information. (2) The experience is very personal. (3) Streaming and messaging can both cater to the families’ needs respectively. (4) A two-way connection that also supports the patient may be needed. (5) Positivity in music is important. (6) Multi-dimensional composition can bring more life to the music. (7) The music should be predictable. (8) The selected data source for the music should have (humanized) meanings.Design for Interactio