Meet-Mitr
Overview
Final project. An application that helps seniors to go out and meet friends in order to help them get away from loneliness.
Project detail
September 2021- April 2022
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Discover
The world is facing an aging society when the number of birthrates is so low and the increasing number of elderly people. According to the department of mental health, Thailand is one of the countries that facing this problem, Thailand enters a complete aged society in 2021 whereas there is more than 20% of the Elderly.
From the research, there are 3 main issues found that lead to an unhappy and unhealthy life. There are the change of family model, retirement and health problems.
Change of the family model decreases the importance of grandparents. Grandparents can not show their care or advise family members which makes them feel like they are not important and useless.
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Retirement elderly don’t have a full-time job and have less interaction with people. They can feel lonely, lose the matter of living and lose the sense of who they are.
Health problems, the older, the weaker body. Seniors become dependent on others. Simple routine activities need a longer time to finish which can affect their self-confidence and self-esteem.
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Empathize
These issues affect senior self-esteem and self confidence make seniors feel emotional vulnerability, undermine themselves that they are not important and useless which later lead to loneliness disease that cause depression, suicide, severe insomnia and later develop into dementia and Alzheimer’s which is an unhappy and unhealthy life.
Since this is the future that we are facing, I am interested in how I can help seniors to live a happy and healthy life.
The first survey with 234 participants, aims to
"collect opinions and existing ways of how seniors deal with changes"
From research and the first survey, it can be concluded that the best way for seniors to live a healthy and happy life is to have friends or a community. Interacting with people of the same age and doing activities that they are interested in together can help cure loneliness and gain self-esteem back.
From this finding, the second survey is launched to
"collect seniors’ behaviors and how they socialize both online and offline"
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The focus is between 60-70 years old because at this age, the elderly are still able to live independently but they are retired for some time. It can be concluded that people tend to socialize with friends that have the same or similar interests.
Because of the Pandemic, people and aging people who are not used to using online stuff have to learn and adapt. Mostly everything change to an online platform included socializing. According to We are social agency, more than 4.5 billion people are using the internet at the start of 2021. Nearly 60 percent of the world’s population is already online and a number of senior users are increasing.
Define
After collecting the survey and turn into personas, there are four pain points found. The pain points are health difficulties, worrying of family members, problems of using technology and phobia of crowdedness from Covid-19 to solve these pain points I come up with how might we plan.
Existing tool
Considering there are not many social media platforms or applications that are specifically designed for Thai seniors to go out and socialize. Claimed by Microsoft Design"Designing a platform for an exclusive group likes elderly is challenging because most of them have physical and cognitive limitations which result in mismatched interaction".
The top 2 most famous social media applications used among seniors are Line and Facebook but both of them are not intentionally designed for senior users. Another application that is designed specifically for Thai senior users to socialize which is called Younghappy.
After analyzing these three applications, they are used in different ways. Line is designed for chatting but Facebook and Young happy are mainly focused on building a community which is the objective of my project so I conduct a user journey of both of them to find what I can do better to serve senior needs. ​
Both applications, users can join the events that are created by the organization or the application’s owner which most of the time are educational events about health which is the most concern topic for seniors. It is helpful but this is not how seniors want to do every day. Seniors still have hobbies that they are interested in and want to do activities that give joy to their lives rather than attending serious health lessons.
Ideate
“What if senior just want to gather together to do hobbies or just chat, how might we help them with that”
Ex: Senior in the department store that trying to talk to the staff for hour because she feels lonely.
Ex: Senior that goes to park expecting that there is someone there so he/she can talk to but has to be disappointed because no one is there. No schedule or event list of who is coming and when they gather together.
I come up with an application that helps seniors to “go out” and socialize from online to offline.
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what if each one can create their own events and anybody who is nearby and interested can join them so this way they can make friends with people who has similar interest and since we sort the events by location, senior doesn’t have to worry about how to get there. Easy to go, they can simply choose interested event to do every day.
Sitemap
Userflow
Wireframe
High-Fidelity Prototype
Apart from Functional value, the design should also have emotional value to the users. The goal is while using the application, users should get a nostalgia experience. To achieve that experience, it requires a lot of research of their past lifestyles and activities that they use to entertain themselves back in the time. I start by researching pop culture in the 1960s to the 1970s.
Button Development
The final style is skeuomorphic design which is inspired by Dieter Rams’ works. The high contrast of reflection of light and shadow makes it looks realistic and tangible. The graphic elements mimic 1960s-1970s electronic appliances' interfaces. (you can see art-direction development in my medium site).
Design-System
Collection of a button, grid, typography, color, logo, clear and reusable components.
Grid System
Logo
Typography
Since the target users are Thai seniors so the application will be in Thai. I choose Bai Jamjuree because it is easy to read and eye-friendly to users. It is also super versatile having several variations in weight which make it look great as a heading font and as body text.
Color Palette
A set of readability graphic colors for the elderly that also give a sense of retro. “The elderly people often show signs of depression like loneliness and fear, for this reason it is important to use colors that create a sense of warmth and security”
Iconography
Button
The size of the buttons has to be big enough to fit fingertips to avoid mismatched interaction. It has to place clearly on the screen and when interacting with the button, the design aims to make users see/feel like they are pushing/clicking the real button so skeuomorphic design is used to convey the experience.
Form fields
Other
components
Graphic elements, cards, buttons mimic the real objects in 1960s-1970s for example; Television shape, push button radio and tickets.
Application Design
Exploring
Meet mitr will show groups that related to users preference/ interests that have been collected from on boarding service when first sign up.
Users can drag the distance bar to search for groups in preferred location to get a better experience searching for a group of friends that interested in the same things whom live nearby .
Chatting and Sharing
A space for users to chat with friends in the group that users have joined; Sharing posts, chatting and creating meeting.
Meeting
Meeting by users: If users want to meet friends physically it can be done by clicking add meet under the post section and inviting friends to join or clicking join the meeting.
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Meeting by Meet-Mitr: for early users to join and get better ideas of the meeting in the application.
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Tracking
Connect with caretaker and click allow tracking, Meet-Mitr will automatically send meeting' status (Timeline and location) to caretaker to give confidence to elderly while going out and assuring family members not to worry about user’s safety.
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