The design challenge and corresponded design solution are focusing on seniors life, which is neglected in today’s society, and how technology or more specifically an app can help with it.
Prompt
Many seniors in today’s society face loneliness and social isolation.
Design a platform that matches seniors with other individuals to form meaningful relationships
Discover & Define
Asking the right questions is essential to the problem-solving process as well as product design. Not only caring about the WHAT the problem is but also concentrating WHY does it happen will help us with product design form the very beginning.
I start by asking WHY.
Why seniors suffer from loneliness and social isolation?
Then, I conduct the initial brainstorming session to find out…
What can help seniors reduce loneliness and social isolation?
Apparently, it is hard to cover all the aspects I mentioned above in one product, what did is…
Narrow down the prompt problem scope
I started by analyzing different user types and to see which one(s) might be the target users. There are mainly four user types who most likely to suffer from loneliness and social isolation.
- Seniors who lost their family members
- Seniors who are LGBT
- Seniors who live far away from cities
- Seniors who have certain diseases or disabilities
Then I drew a cost effective diagram to analyze which type(s) might be our target users.
Platform choice
I chose to design a mobile app for this product.
Reason 1
With smartphone ownership in the U.S. more than doubling in the past five years, Americans are embracing mobile technology at a rapid pace. And while adoption rates among seniors continue to trail those of the overall population, the share of adults ages 65 and up who own smartphones has risen 24 percentage points (from 18% to 42%) since 2013. Today, roughly half of older adults who own cell phones have some type of smartphone.
Reason 2
Mobile phone is portable.
Design Decision Making
From the Prompt:
Matches seniors with other individuals to form meaningful relationships.
That leads to two questions:
What causes to a meaningful relationship?
- Reciprocality
- Same interests
What is a match?
- Based on location
- Based on sexual orientation
- Based on same interests (Religious belief, Food, Relationship, Exercise etc…)
User pain points
- Seniors abilities are still valued in the mainstream society, but it’s been overlooked.
- People care more about seniors physical health rather than mental health, while good mental health actually contribute to physical health.
Problem Statement
Many seniors nowadays are living alone especially who lost their spouses or who are in the LGBT groups who didn’t get the chance to have a long term partner in their early lives. Even though physically they are capable to do many things, but they don’t have so many connections around them, therefore, they often feel lonely and isolated.
From Design Philosophy to HMW
Design philosophy is based on Reciprocality and Same Interests
How might we reveal seniors potential and connect them with people who can add on to each others live?
Design Decision
Build up warming communities for neglected seniors to find a family member liked relationship.
Neglected seniors
- Seniors who lost their family members
- Seniors who are LGBT
Family member liked relationships
- Parent — Child liked
- Romantic
Ideate
User story
Karen is a 62 years old widow. Her husband passed away 3 years ago because of heart disease. Now she is a retired nurse, living with her dog Maggie in the suburb area of NYC. Her kids come to visit her twice a year. She sometimes feels lonely, and couldn’t find a person to have a deep conversation with or connect with. Even her dog is getting old.
After using this app, she connected with some folks who also lost their partners. Seems like it is possible to date someone among those people she knows. She also get the chance to know some single young adults who lost their parents, with them, she feels a special connection.
Solution
- Match them with single young adults who lost their parents to form a parent-child liked relationship with each other.
- Encourage them to move forward from their previous life and get to know some available single seniors to form a partnership or a relationship.
- Gather people by groups and based on the same interests and attending offline activities or have meaningful discussions online to build up more connections.
Ideation of features and Information Architecture
Final Design
Check out http://muyitao.myportfolio.design to see more of my work.
