Verena Pues
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Service Design · 2017

Cura

Strascheg Center for Entrepreneurship

Concept of a conversational agent that streamlines the early stages of home care by linking family caregivers with essential contacts and simplifying administrative tasks like paperwork, scheduling, and coordination.

  • UX Design
  • UX Research
  • Prototyping

Overview

As part of the interdisciplinary program “Health and Technology”, the University of Applied Sciences Munich partnered with the Strascheg Center for Entrepreneurship (SCE) to bring together design and nursing students. The goal of the initiative was to explore how human-centered technologies could meaningfully improve real-life healthcare challenges.

Within this context, our team developed Cura, a digital agent designed to assist family members during the initial, often chaotic phase of organizing home care. Cura supports users in managing bureaucracy, submitting applications, finding the right contacts, and understanding next steps. As a conversational interface, it offers structured, personalized guidance, available anytime.

Illustration of the Cura chatbot on a phone, surrounded by care-related tasks like appointments, forms, and support contacts.

Challenge

When a loved one suddenly requires care, families often face a flood of paperwork, deadlines, and fragmented information. Our interviews with caregivers revealed how time-consuming and emotionally draining this initial phase is.

Many struggle with long wait times, inconsistent advice, redundant paperwork, and the fear of missing crucial benefits due to lack of clarity. The existing systems, ranging from websites and hotlines to brochures and apps, are often outdated, impersonal, or overwhelming.

We asked ourselves: What if there was a single, intelligent companion that helped people find their way in a calm, clear, and proactive way?

  • Illustration of a caregiver overwhelmed by a large stack of documents and deadlines.

    "Need for long-term care entails endless formalities and appointments."

  • Illustration of an overflowing paper basket representing excessive administrative paperwork.

    "Family caregivers often lack the time and energy to navigate complex information, so they miss benefits they’re entitled to."

  • Illustration of a caregiver facing a confusing maze that symbolizes fragmented care information.

    "Clear, neutral information on how to apply for support and when support applies is hard to find."

Approach

Through expert and user interviews, we gained deep insight into the workflows, emotional pain points, and real-world barriers caregivers face. Based on these insights, we created personas, a user journey- and stakeholder maps. We identified key opportunities for automation, simplification, and emotional relief.

We then designed the UI for selected use cases and implemented a clickable prototype to test and communicate the interaction flow. In addition, we produced a concept movie to present the vision clearly and persuade potential stakeholders of the idea’s value.

Mobile app mockups showing Cura conversation flows for guidance, document handling, contact matching, and appointment coordination.

Outcome

Cura doesn’t just explain what to do, it acts. It fills out forms using available data, sends reminders, and archives all documents in one place. The user stays in control but delegates effort.

Thereby, it translates a complex bureaucratic system into a calm, guided process. It saves users time, reduces stress, and ensures access to services they might otherwise miss. Insurance providers and healthcare services benefit from cleaner submissions and fewer repeated questions, freeing up time for real human consultation.

Team: Katja Niggl, Melanie Pfnür, Anna Lieb, and Verena Pues.

Watch Concept Movie (Youtube)