How We Rebuilt Aliviado Around the People Who Rely on It

At Input Logic, we've worked with Aliviado Dementia Care — a program from the Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing at NYU's Rory Meyers College of Nursing — for more than five years and several iterations of the product. Their app helps the family caregivers of people living with dementia carry a little less. Caregivers liked it — but many drifted away after the first week.

Recent research told us why. Caregivers valued the library, the strategy videos, and the reminders, but they wanted the app to answer them — "no feedback from journal entries; would like to see a response."

We tackled the problem in phases—starting with the individual caregiver, then expanding to the whole care team and the clinical teams supporting them.

The Goal

1. Make the first week habit-forming — so that logging gives something back instead of feeling like data entry.
2. Match how families actually share care — let each person living with dementia have a whole care team.
3. Give clinical teams a window in — a web dashboard to see who's struggling and reach out.

What We Did

First, we closed the feedback loop — building what caregivers had asked for. Now, after a caregiver logs the day, the app gives something back: warm, supportive feedback that responds to how the day actually went — "You showed up today, and that counts" on a hard day, "You've earned this sense of relief" on a good one — so caregivers feel supported, not just tracked. We reworked journaling with more prompts and a word cloud to make reflecting easier, and gave caregivers more insight into what's happening — trends over time, and personalized content like tips matched to their own care plan.

Then we added care team members. Each person living with dementia could now have more than one caregiver, so the people sharing the work—a second family member or an aide—could all contribute to their care instead of routing everything through a single login. We built the invitation flow and access controls to keep that simple and safe.

Finally, we gave the clinical teams a way to see in.The dashboard lets a nurse see everyone they support in one place and identify who may need a check-in, so their time goes where it matters most. It’s web-only, and a caregiver’s data appears only with their consent.

Where It Is Now

It’s still early for retention data, but the product fits the reality of caregiving much more closely. It’s designed to give caregivers something useful when they return, reflect how families actually divide the work, and give clinical teams a view into how caregivers are doing on a Tuesday—not just at their next visit. Each layer strengthens the next: more meaningful caregiver engagement creates a fuller picture, making the dashboard more useful to the people trying to help.

Takeaway

Making an app sticky isn't about adding more to it. It's about giving people a reason to come back — closing the loop after they put the work in, fitting the way they actually live, and having the discipline to leave out what doesn't belong.