Building Buddy
The Brief
I wanted to do something that would benefit my elderly neighbors, so I designed an app to connect people who live in the same apartment building or complex - specifically, older people who need help with small tasks and younger people who want to help.
The Deliverable
I delivered a three prong solution: A native mobile app that works with a corresponding, but slightly different, webapp.
The research
After a competitive audit to see how other people have tried to solve this problem, I interviewed 6 elderly people, 3 helpers, and the custodian of my building, (in a language that I don't speak!), to learn what kinds of tasks people need help with, what kinds of tasks people would/would not be willing to help with, and what would be helpful for the custodian.
The foundational research gave me the info I needed to create all the UX assets. From there I did three rounds of testing to tighten up the designs. Because I had to design and test in two languages, it was double the work. Something that in English takes a few words to say takes many more in Italian.
The design
There are two sides to the mobile app: one for the Requestors, the other for the Helpers. The request for help, made by the Requestor, is made by voice, and the Helper is provided with both the recorded audio clip and the transcribed message to decide if they want to pick up the request or not.
The four color-coded category icons (Home, Pet, Chat, and Phone) help Helpers see at a glance what the Request is, generally, about.
The website and webapp were designed with the custodian in mind. It allows them to oversee the use of the mobile app, provides access to the details and messages of every user, alerts them to requests that remain open, and helps them keep track of the tools they have loaned out.
Final thoughts
I really enjoyed designing specifically for the elderly! The constraints force one to be creative. Icons aren't necessarily understood; gestures, like scrolling, aren't necessarily understood; buttons have to be large and typing has to be minimized. On-boarding and tutorials have to be extremely concise. Their tech also has to be taken into consideration as they are often on hand-me-down telephones with small screens. I learned SO MUCH, on many levels, doing this case study.
