Could better family conversations strengthen the care economy?

A quiet crisis, and a system that runs on invisible labour

Google’s internal thinktank and social innovation team, Jigsaw, are tasked with seizing the AI era to strengthen, rather than undermine, human agency. The team at Jigsaw could see the urgency facing the US and the rest of the world in terms of family caregiving, and wanted to explore innovation potential based on the lived reality of caregivers and their families.

An estimated 59 million Americans are caring for another adult – a parent, a spouse, a sibling. It is some of the most consequential work in healthcare, yet much of it takes place without formal support. Caregiving rarely arrives as a formal role. It often begins as small moments helping out, or temporary responsibilities: collecting prescriptions, interpreting a doctor’s instructions, picking up groceries or answering a late-night call. Over time, these gestures become an informal role that remains largely invisible even to the person performing it, until it begins to strain.

For most families, future-planning conversations are deferred amid the everyday juggle. Questions like “should Mom still be driving” or “Can Dad live by himself?” are then forced in moments of crisis, when families have fewer options. Having good conversations early can protect the agency and well-being of caregivers and older adults while reducing costs for families and the wider care system. Jigsaw, Google’s incubator for civic and social technology, wanted to understand what stands in the way of families acting as they would wish, and how AI might support them without displacing the judgement, intimacy and negotiation that is integral to human care.

Studying caregiving where it happens

Along with Jigsaw's researchers and developers, we spent 150+ hours with more than 60 families, experts and care managers across New York and Arizona. We joined them on errands, sat with them over meals and coffee, and spent time in their homes as they went about their daily life. We visited care managers in their workplaces, drawing on decades of experience supporting families through both the immediate and long-term demands of caregiving.

That closeness is what surfaced the harder truths of care. Even when caregivers are fully in control of a schedule, most still have no room to think about the future. It also revealed that some of caregiving’s most difficult moments are also among its most meaningful and shouldn’t be designed away. These insights shaped the ideas we explored next in a second research round. After narrowing in on the strongest directions, we invited caregivers, care managers, and potential strategic partners to Google’s offices to co-create solutions and inform the team on how to proceed; to engage in the conversation on where AI could help, what role it should play and where it should leave space.

"In her head she adds fives, at 80 it was 85, then at 85 it was 90. [...] It’s not so much in age, but what she can do for herself. We’re kind of leaving it up to her, but we have in the back of our head what we would plan – if you have that, it’s not starting from scratch."

– Dahlia, 58, Caregiver

A foundation for what Jigsaw builds next

A sharp brief. The research set the path for both what to build and who build it with. The work framed the design question and its strategic role for Jigsaw, focusing on supporting families to prepare early for the future.

A concept now being built. Working as a cross-functional team with Jigsaw’s researchers and engineers, we defined and iterated the early concept now in development. From opportunity landscape to chosen direction, the research gave the solution a grounded starting point, and the design principles gave the team guardrails for meeting the human context in a relevant and sensitive way.

New partnerships. The co-creation process helped Jigsaw establish new partnerships in the space.

Stories that catalyse a conversation. A film built from the fieldwork gave Jigsaw a way to bring caregivers’ stories into the conversation about caregiving across Google and beyond.

You can read more detailed findings in a Medium article from Jigsaw, co-authored by Ian Beacock and Shruti Verma.