Designing for the Sandwich Generation

Ask yourself: who else is using this, just less visibly?

A brief that says "build an app for the resident" or "design this for the patient" is naming the obvious user. It's rarely naming all of them. Family members are checking in, coordinating visits, staying across updates. Staff or care workers are fielding questions from everyone at once. None of these people are named in the brief, but all of them are relying on the product to do part of their job - usually the part that involves staying informed without having to ask.

If your product only speaks to that one person, everyone else around them is left working things out over the phone, through a hallway conversation, or not at all. That's not a small gap. For a lot of families, "not knowing what's going on" is the single most stressful part of caring for someone else.

Why this is easy to miss

It's easy to miss because the brief is written from one point of view, and that point of view usually wins by default. Whoever is named as "the user" gets the screens, the flows, the attention. Everyone else gets assumed - a side effect the product will presumably work out for, even though nobody actually designed for them.

This shows up constantly in care settings, but it isn't unique to them. Any product built around a clearly defined user is worth a second look for who else is standing just outside that frame - the partner managing a shared account, the adult child keeping tabs on an ageing parent, the colleague covering for someone on leave. If they're affected by the product but invisible in the design of it, they're the ones improvising.

What this looks like when it's done properly

We saw this clearly while working with Ryman Healthcare on the app built for residents of their village. Residents were the obvious user… but not the only people involved in village life. Families wanted to check in and coordinate visits. Staff were fielding communication from both directions, resident and family, often about the same thing.

Designing well for that meant building for the whole circle, not just the person named in the brief: a way for family members to stay across activities and updates without needing the resident to relay everything themselves, and a way for staff to communicate once instead of twice. The resident still sat at the centre but the app stopped pretending they were the only person who needed one.

Bottom line?

If people are relying on your product without being the one it's officially built for, the brief hasn't done its job. Good care design means building for the whole circle around someone… not just the person whose name is on the account.