Learning Objectives

• Apply health informatics principles to real-world digital health products.
• Understand the intersection of technology, caregiving workflows, and mental health tracking.
• Gain hands-on experience in QA testing, stakeholder feedback collection, and product improvement.
• Contribute to optimizing digital workflows in institutional care settings.

Project Overview

This internship project focuses on supporting the enhancement and optimization of the Sundae Doll companion app, with an emphasis on its use in long-term care facilities by both residents and caregiving staff. The intern will contribute to workflow design, quality assurance testing, and app feedback collection, helping ensure the platform is user-friendly, clinically relevant, and effective in supporting caregiver well-being.

Core Responsibilities

1. Workflow Design & Support

• Observe and document how the Sundae Doll and companion app are used by care staff and residents in long-term care facilities.
• Identify and propose ways to improve daily user workflows, minimize digital fatigue, and enhance overall integration with staff routines.
• Map out existing vs. optimized interaction flows for caregiver dashboards, resident engagement tracking, and alert handling.

2. Quality Assurance (QA) & Usability Testing

• Assist in structured QA testing of the Sundae Doll app, including caregiver dashboards, user alerts, and resident engagement modules.
• Identify bugs, design inconsistencies, or confusing user interface elements and report findings in QA logs.
• Collaborate with product team on retesting after fixes and new feature releases.

3. Caregiver Mental Health Support Tracker Evaluation

• Conduct focused testing and feedback collection to inform the design of the app’s Caregiver Wellness Tracker, designed to flag early signs of burnout and stress. and provide timely insights, local resources etc.
• Work with caregivers of older adults (within the community) to assess needs, features, and ideal design of the caregiver section

4. Data-Driven Recommendations

• Aggregate insights from user feedback, field testing, and usage logs into a feature improvement report.
• Provide evidence-based recommendations for future iterations or new feature development related to caregiver support and resident interaction monitoring.

Preferred Skills / Background

• Strong interest in digital health, mental health, or geriatric care.
• Familiarity with EHRs, user-centered design, QA testing, or digital workflow mapping is an asset.
• Excellent communication skills for interfacing with frontline staff and users.

Outcome for the Student

By the end of the internship, the student will have contributed meaningfully to real-time product evaluation, gained hands-on experience in health tech QA and usability testing, and played a role in refining tools designed to reduce caregiver burnout and improve quality of life for older adults.