Interview about Coco AI Healthcare Assistive App, winner of the A' Digital Product Design Award 2025
Coco is an innovative AI health assistant designed for adults aged 50 plus to simplify health management. It integrates personalized medical data, condition specific insights, and verified advice into one intuitive platform. Features like medication reminders, vital tracking, and family, doctor sharing address the unique needs of aging populations. By balancing advanced technology with accessibility and user-friendliness, Coco reduces information overload, empowers proactive health management, and enhances quality of life for older adults.
View detailed images, specifications, and award details on A' Design Award & Competition website.
View Design DetailsWe started with focused interviews with adults over 50, many of whom were managing chronic conditions or caring for aging family members. These conversations revealed a clear pattern: confusion around fragmented health information, low confidence in navigating digital tools, and a desire for warmth and clarity in healthcare experiences. These insights directly informed COCO’s core features—simplified language, voice-first interaction, and a friendly, companion-like design. This human-centered approach led to global recognition, including a Silver A’ Design Award, Gold & Silver Muse Design Awards (USA), and a UX Design Award nomination (Germany). These honors reinforce that accessible, emotionally intelligent design can have meaningful global impact.
One of our biggest challenges was creating a system powerful enough to provide tailored insights, while remaining approachable for users with limited tech literacy. We tackled this through progressive disclosure—showing basic information first and revealing more only if the user asks. We also prioritized clear typography, large touch targets, and voice-based interaction. Balancing AI’s potential with cognitive ease was a constant thread through our design iterations. Accessibility wasn’t just a feature; it was the framing lens for all technological decisions.
COCO addresses health misinformation by guaranteeing that every piece of information it shares is backed by a verifiable and reputable source. All health insights come from trusted medical organizations such as the CDC, NIH, and Mayo Clinic. When users ask a question, COCO not only provides a clear, easy-to-understand answer—it also cites the specific source so users can review the original information if they wish. This approach builds transparency and trust, empowering users to make informed decisions while reducing the risk of falling for misinformation.
Many older adults we interviewed mentioned the burden of constantly updating loved ones or forgetting to relay important details to their doctors. This inspired COCO’s “Shared Circle” feature, allowing users to selectively share insights, reminders, or progress with caregivers and healthcare providers. Importantly, this feature was designed to support independence, not replace it. Users stay in control—deciding what to share, when, and with whom—while receiving an added layer of encouragement and accountability.
We focused on tracking features that directly impacted day-to-day management of common chronic conditions: medication adherence, blood pressure, sleep, and hydration. These were prioritized based on both user interviews and public health data. For visualization, we avoided overwhelming charts in favor of trend-based storytelling—COCO summarizes changes in natural language (“Your average sleep improved this week”) with the option to dive into simple graphs. Winning the Silver A’ Design Award validated our belief that inclusive design and innovation can go hand in hand.
We went through over a dozen iterations, each informed by direct usability testing with users over 50. We conducted think-aloud sessions and eye-tracking studies, where we quickly learned that even slight interface clutter caused confusion. We trimmed excess, prioritized conversational onboarding, and even reduced color contrast in certain states to minimize cognitive strain. Every refinement was rooted in feedback. Our mantra was: “Simple is not less—simple is respectful.” That philosophy guided every design choice.
In the future, we envision COCO evolving into a full-spectrum preventive care companion. We’re exploring deeper integration with wearable data, predictive health modeling, and even emotional well-being monitoring. As loneliness becomes an increasing health risk among older adults, COCO may also adopt emotionally intelligent dialogue to provide not just medical guidance, but comfort. Our goal is to grow with the user—not just react to illness, but proactively support aging with dignity and empowerment.
From tone of voice to visual language, everything about COCO was designed to soothe. The mascot-inspired persona (though not a literal pet) provides emotional continuity. We also focused on giving feedback that was encouraging rather than alarming. For example, instead of alerting a user that a reading is “too high,” COCO says, “Let’s keep an eye on this and consider a few gentle changes.” This subtle shift helps users feel in control rather than defeated.
COCO was built to be a frontline defense against misinformation. In addition to surfacing source citations and trustworthy content, COCO also includes explainers for medical jargon and visual cues indicating trust levels (e.g., green check for verified claims). By blending education with verification, COCO transforms passive consumption into active understanding—an essential shift for older adults managing complex health conditions.
We implemented a dynamic personalization engine that adjusts based on user behavior, language patterns, and engagement history. Users who prefer voice interaction get more spoken responses, while others may prefer concise text summaries. The system also adjusts vocabulary complexity depending on user comprehension levels, learned over time. Personalization isn't just aesthetic—it’s structural, helping each user feel like COCO was made for them. This tailored experience was instrumental in COCO’s recognition on the international design stage.
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