SrBonds

A lifelong journey starts here.

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The Beginnings

We were given the prompt:
Design a website experience for seniors and elderly.
And while discussing what route to go with this prompt, we decided to focus on elderly who feel isolated and finding a way to help them socialize with others.

Discover

Due to the time limitations, we decided to conduct surveys and comparative/competitive analysis as well as collecting some secondary research from academic journals talking about the isolation of elderly people.
Key Takeaways:
• Seniors and elderly need technical knowledge from youngsters to embrace online entertainment.
• Elderly value reliability, perceived usefulness, and social benefits
• Social isolation of the elderly is likely caused by geographical location and health issues.
• Internet usage helps middle-aged and older adults by contributing to better cognitive functioning and higher perceptions of social support

Define

After synthesizing our research findings and the key takeaways from it, we created our persona and the issue they were dealing with…
Elderly and seniors need a centralized location on an easy to learn and easily navigable digital platform where they can find upcoming events and/or other peers to talk to so they can socialize and are not isolated and lonely.

• How might we create a website that is easily navigable for an elderly user?
• How might we design a way for users to find information on the events they would be interested -in attending?
• How might we find a way to increase social interaction over digital means for elderly users?
• How might we utilize accessibility for elderly users?

Designing

After creating our user flow and sitemap, we had an idea of what we wanted our site to look like and took to sketching up some wireframes so we can discuss the features that we came up with and converged our ideas together to create our low fidelity prototype and from there we conducted a usability test to gauge the heat maps and see how we can improve the design in our high fidelity prototype.

Challenges

We could not utilize the full time allotted during this designation due to the team being created later in the design process as well as some team members dropping out last minute Due to our users being in the older age range, we found it difficult to find users to survey and did not find it possible to interview older users within a 48 hours time frame. We did not conduct a comprehensive test on the accessibility of the website.

Reflections and what we learned

Communication is key when creating a new product in a time crunch. It is very important to keep track of time so we did not spend too long on one part of the task. This was the first time we’ve ever teamed up and collaborated with each other and it was a learning curve when it came to us learning how we worked.

What’s Next

A more detailed prototype with all pages being able to adjust the sizing of the text to suit the needs of the user as well as another round of usability tests to see what can be improved upon the next iteration of this product as well as going more in depth.

Tools

Figma – for designing the wireframes and prototyping
Maze – for usability tests
Google Forms – to conduct surveys
Google Sheets – to organize our research findings
Discord – for communication

APA References
Liu, D., Liu, A., & Tu, W. (2019). The acceptance behavior of New Media Entertainment among older adults: Living arrangement as a mediator. The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 91(3), 274–298. https://doi.org/10.1177/0091415019864602
Mariano, J., Marques, S., Ramos, M. R., & de Vries, H. (2021). Internet use by middle-aged and older adults: Longitudinal relationships with functional ability, social support, and self-perceptions of aging. Psychology and Aging, 36(8), 983–995. https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000643
Silva, P., Delerue Matos, A., & Martinez-Pecino, R. (2022). The contribution of the internet to reducing social isolation in individuals aged 50 years and older: Quantitative study of data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and retirement in Europe. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 24(1). https://doi.org/10.2196/20466
Resources
Wireframes Kit by Nailul Izah
https://www.figma.com/community/file/1122167340874425914

Built With

  • figjam
  • figma
  • maze
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