01 OVERVIEW

Background

📍 Virtual Hackathon

USC and UCLA’s virtual hackathon, Hack for Hope, provided us with the opportunity to innovate solutions to address critical challenges created by COVID-19.
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My teammates and I wanted to focus on helping the elderly, as they are among the most vulnerable groups of people affected by social distancing.

🏆 Hackathon results: We won the bronze award!

My Role

Problem

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‍12 million seniors 👵 👴 in the US live alone.
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• From research, we discovered that many elders are unable to independently manage certain tasks that are vital to their health and require assistance in areas such as medication reminders and exercise and mobility.
• The pandemic has separated many caregivers and loved ones from elders and halted physical visits. This could lead to further complications for the elderly.
• Even worse, people with memory loss may find COVID-19 especially overwhelming. Routines are disrupted, visitors are few, and caregivers are stretched thin.‍

“

When schools close, home-care workers have to stay with their children, leaving frail elders isolated in homes they cannot manage."
— NY times

“

It would be nice to have someone to take care of me but it is expensive so not to worry. I do my best.
— Diana Fernandes, 79
(lives alone, husband died, managing painful foot injury and an asthmatic)

02 RESEARCH

Understanding Our Users

Due to the short time frame of the hackathon and the fact that everyone was in lockdown, getting a hold of our target users was challenging. For the user research, we decided to rely on recently-published news articles and the 3 in-depth user interviews I conducted via zoom. I was only able to reach adults who have an elder adult they care for, but are currently separated during this pandemic.
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Key Takeaways‍
• Middle-aged adults with elderly parents are busy. They have full-time jobs and children they have to take care of. This makes it hard for them to find time to check up on their parents, even though they are often worried about their wellbeing.
• They want to provide a network of support for their parents (in case anything happens and they’re not available)
• A lot of elders are afraid to call their children and inform them whenever they are not feeling well, as they do not want to bother them
• We also found that 49% of seniors in the US own smartphones, but many still don’t feel confident using them. There is currently a shortage of digital products and services that are designed for older adults.
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Target Users‍
From initial research, we identified our two main customer segments: elders & caregivers‍

Elderly

(Ages: 65+) 👵

Use Case: Receiving Care
‍Problem: Social distancing has made me feel completely disconnected from my family. They are busy and they don’t have time for me, I am left alone.
‍Persona: Senior Ages 65+
‍Why (emotional benefit of product): I feel cared for and connected to loved ones

• Lives at home alone or temporary separated from their families due to social distancing.
‍• May have trouble performing important daily tasks or routines, such as remembering to take their medication or getting regular exercises.
• Often try to maintain a consistent routine and they also value some independence.
• Pain points include forgetting certain tasks and sometimes lacking the care they need from loved ones.

Caregivers

(Adults) 👩👨

Use Case: Providing care
Problem: Social distancing is making it impossible for me to check in with my parents and make sure that they are doing okay.
Persona: Adults with busy lifestyles who have elders they care about.
Why (emotional benefit of product): I feel less worried

• Informal caregivers that includes family, friends or neighbors who care for the elderly.
• Tries to visit the elder as frequently as possible, but social distancing has prevented them to do so.
• Busy schedules have also prevented them from frequent visits and constant check-ins.
• They often worry about the safety and health of their loved ones.

After brainstorming and evaluating various ideas, we finally came up with Bridge. This app connects the elder population with various individuals in their support network, designed to be easy for seniors to use and provide them with the care they need.

Information Architecture

DESIGN OBJECTIVES:
• To aid and mimic real-life care-giving interactions

• To make navigation throughout the app as frictionless and simple as possible for elders
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In order to meet these objectives, I decided to place all the functions on the highly visible areas of the homepage. All pages will be easily accessed from the homepage, without having any hidden menus, as elders may not be able to find them.

ELDERLY'S VERSION

04 DESIGN

Style Guide

Our solution needed to have a simple and efficient user interface design for elders. I created a style guide while relying on this article (A Guide to Interface Design for Older Adults), to better understand our target users.
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Key things I kept in mind while designing the style guide and user interface:
• Fonts should be no smaller than 16px
• Sans serif typefaces are easier to read, often preferred for elders
• Button sizes should be kept large
• Most icons should be labeled with text
• Simple navigational structure - menus should be kept to a single function

FONTS
I chose a sans serif font as older adults find it easier to recognize characters without the serifs. Because I was designing for elders, I had to make sure the fonts were large enough for most elders to see clearly. Based on elderly design guides I found, I made sure no fonts were smaller than 14px.

COLORS
From research, I found that elders are more drawn to softer shades of colors. I chose a shade of blue as my primary color because according to color psychology, elders are drawn to blue. I chose light red (pink) to be my secondary color as red is generally associated with love and care.

05 TESTING

Accessibility

One of the main challenges while designing this product was making sure the interface was accessible to older adults. Another challenge for the elderly using technology is their gradual decline of motor ability and eyesight. Therefore, I was unsure whether font sizes and buttons were large enough. I decided to conduct an accessibility test with my three grandparents (ages 77 - 86), using the initial screens I designed.
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1st Iteration Test Takeaways
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All three of my grandparents were unable to read the texts in several places. The main issues were:
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• Thin-weighted fonts
• Fonts were too small in some areas
• Gray-colored fonts did not stand out enough from the background
• Bright colored backgrounds were distracting on some screens
• White on pink was quite hard to read

In order to improve the product’s accessibility, I checked out the web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) and used a contrast checker to see if my product’s initial choice of foreground and background colors applied to the requirements. It turns out that the color combinations I used had a contrast ratio of 2.06:1 and did not pass any of the required ratios.

I decided to change my color palette.

• Instead of using bright pink as the primary color, I decided to use a shade of blue
• According to color psychology, elderly people tend to gravitate toward the color blue because "blue calming color that can help relieve tension"
• In order to ensure the screens will be usable by a very wide range of people with low vision, I used 'Accessible Color Picker' to evaluate the accessibility of my new palette.
• I also use this tool to help me select better foreground and background color combinations

Navigation

User Testing Key Takeaways
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• There were several problems with navigation. I asked my grandparents to navigate and click around the prototype. There were many times when they did not know how to continue and where to press. I had to make further changes because it’s important that the app should be easy to navigate.
• Because reading is quite difficult for some older adults, they may not read all the texts displayed and so, the important ones should be emphasized.
• It’s important to give users more confidence in knowing where they are in the app. This can be improved by using clearer headers and labels.
• Large CTAs are very important as it tells users what to do next

Final Product

Simple check-in.
• Check in on elderly family members or friends even when they’re hundreds of miles away
• A simple solution for busy adults
• Loved ones are notified when elders feel unwell
‍• Constant check-ins can make loved ones feel a sense of relief, especially during stressful times

Daily Schedule/Reminders
• Shared to-do lists between elders and loved ones
• Encourage healthy habits & important tasks such as medication, daily exercising and calling loved ones
• Can be either organized by the care providers or the care recipient themselves

Emergency Alert
• Easily accessed on homepage
• Sends SOS alert to emergency department and notifies close contacts
• "I'm Safe" button to cancel alert

Network of Support
• Add loved ones into your network
• Makes sure help is there whenever they need it
‍• Immediate notifications sent to network when something is wrong

06 CONCLUSION

We were selected from 90+ teams to be awarded the bronze prize and received $2500 in funding!

View our pitch deck: Here (includes competitive analysis and business objectives)
View our pitch video: Here (made with Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro)
(**Note: User testing was conducted after hackathon submission)

This was my very first design project. In these two weeks, I learned so much about the process of user experience design, from reading articles online, researching existing products, and from reaching out to people for feedback/advice.
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Being both a product manager and the only designer for the team was not an easy task. I was also responsible for the product strategy, setting the vision of the product, market research, and leading team discussions. Although these two weeks were quite stressful, it was all worth it in the end because I discovered that working in this field is something I want to continue doing in the future.

What I Learned

• The importance of viewing a problem from the perspectives of others. This project taught me about building empathy and putting myself’s in the shoes of people who were completely different from me. By taking the time to consider the perspectives of caregivers, elders, and people of different demographics through research and interviews, it provided us with a great number of questions and considerations that I wouldn’t have otherwise encountered.
• Integrating both business and design thinking into the product.
• Usability testing is the fastest way to learn
• Should start testing and validating design decisions since the initial stages
• How to collaborate with developers more efficiently by understanding how they think, and also how to approach a challenge given limited time
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Next Steps

From this project, my teammates and I became passionate about helping elders. Therefore, we will continue working on the solution that will help strengthen the connection between elders and loved ones. After this, we will conduct more in-depth user research, refine our idea, and continue to conduct user tests on both the elderly and their loved ones.

As technology advances with the introduction of new smart phones, smart appliances, and social media sites, many elders are being left behind. After this project, I would like to further explore accessibility design and how we can use design to make technology useful to all users, including people with disabilities and the aging demographic. I think design plays a large role in reducing digital products’ barrier to adoption for elders.