Memories: An app to combat depression
1. Introduction
This probably was the most difficult project that I had at Ironhack course. I failed, but I learned a lot. When I chose the topic I knew that it would be a challenge, but on my professional career and personal life I am used to step out from my confort zone. And a collateral benefit: I spent time with my mother (near 80 years old), who has never used whatsapp or any smartphone, showing her how to use a tablet to read the online newspaper or play with memory games.
This project had a scope of 2 weeks. I wanted to do an app for seniors (not old people, we have to be inclusive. It’s one of the things that I learned during this project).
One day when I was taking the metro, I saw and advertisement from a senior association with a phrase that reached my heart: “I never thought that the worst thing of growing older was solitude”. This was the trigger because I felt deeply moved.
2. Design thinking process
As usual, as a UX/UI designer I wanted to use a framework to help me with the process. I used Design Thinking methodology.
1. Empathize to understand better the user.
Fist all all, I had to gather a lot of information. I wanted to learn main problems for seniors to interact with app and technology. I read a lot of studies from senior associations. I read specifically one from Amics de la Gent Gran that moved me.
Despite that these 2 studies had a scientific base (7 Focus groups with 7–8 seniors during a year (2018)) I also validated the information with two interviews with social workers.
In a nutshell, my research was:
- Studies from Associations: “Amics de la gent gran” / “Fundació Arrels”
- Research Method: (2018) : 4 focus groups — 8 person in each group
- Interviews: 5 interviews at “Fundació La Pedrera” (ages from 72 until 84 years old)
- Survey: 23 answers with one question: Imagine that your 80 years grandpa is in a nursing home and next week is his birthday. What would be your present?
Most of the people who responded the survey answered with emotional presents (spend the whole day with him, a photo of all the entire family to retain a “Memory” (and this is how I decided to name the app...). With this survey I also wanted to check thoughts about senior needs from their relatives.
In the interviews that I had sometimes I felt in a blind alley. I had opposite answers when I asked to seniors about their relation with technology: One of them explained to me that she wants to understand technology to be part of the society and to be able to understand what young people talk, but I also talk with a senior who explained that technology make him feel more alone because his grandsons payed more attention to mobile phone / computer than to him.
Another conclusion that I reach: you can feel solitude having people around. Mediterranean society has a lot of expectations about family. You can have family but this not implies that they will visit you or…what happens when your partner has dementia? You can live with him but you can not talk or share thoughts with him.
I was a little bit lost, but one my teacher assistants help me to focus. If solitude was the main pain point that I wanted to resolve…why don’t focus in all the problems related one of thee pain points? I needed to narrow the point of view.
Then I created this list and I decided to focus on depression:
2. Define the problem using all the information gathered on the previous phase (Empathize).
Then I arrived to my problem statement: “Seniors need a way to connect with his loved ones to overcome solitude (and all related problems)”
I realized that I needed two user personas. The senior with the pain point and someone (probably some relative or best friend) who will help with this problem.
My user personas:
3. Ideate using brainstorming to find one possible solution for the main pain point.
I ideated an app called Memories for senior people who feel lonely and suffers depression due to that. I wanted to do a very easy app with an easy navigation (the user is reminded with screens of the interactions done.)
The solution is very simple. I wanted a closed social app. Only for seniors and his loved ones. Of course, you can have Facebook or Instagram, but when you share content in this 2 apps usually you share to everybody. I wanted that senior knew that if someone shared some content with him though this app it was because this person was thinking about him because he was special.
Users where able to share four types of digital content: text messages, voice messages, videos or photos.
4. Prototype to validate the idea, testing all this prototypes with users.
For this I created 2 user flows:
An here you can watch both userflows in video: The task is simple. Julio is visiting Thailand and he is having breakfasts before to go to see temples and pagodas. He record and send a voice message to his mum to let her know that he had to wake up at 4 a.m. but that he is excited (probably later he will share a video of a photo in the temple). Sarah receives the voice message and he can give him feedback with: a) a heart icon, b) a text: “I miss you” or b) write a most complete text.
5. Testing the prototype to polish it and to receive feedback from User interactions.
I didn’t know if it was a better flow that user chose the “call to action” and after the person to send the digital content/ memory or the opposite. I did a competitive analysis with Instagram app and it help me to decide that the best flow was to chose the person first and after the content that I wanted to sent (and also I saw that my first layout was not the best one…)
Other main changes through the 3 iterations:
1: I deleted the calendar (my first idea was that user had a calendar to check the content by days but through iteration I realized that for my user persona was complicated and someone told me “What happens if your senior checks the calendar and nobody has sent her any content in 3 months? he/she would not feel more lonely? It’s sad, but you have also to think in unhappy paths in your app.
2, 3 & 4: Thanks to competitive analysis I changed the main layout and the flow (explained before).
5: I realized that I had some navigation problems and I added the navigation toolbar.
3. Visual Thinking things that I tried to have in mind due to my user persona’s age.
- Short-term memory > introduce product features gradually over time instead of all at once
- Give clear feedback on progress and completion
- Use breadcrumbs or make it clear how to get back to the home page
- No text overlaid on images or graphics
- When using icons and symbols always pair them with text
- Font 16px minimum
- Seniors may not understand things like scrolling or search functionality
- The elderly may not recognize common abbreviations or acronyms (especially those with dementia)
- The elderly have much longer attention spans than younger people so long-form text and deep content is ok
- Icons and symbols are less clear, especially the hamburger menu. When using icons and symbols always pair them with text
4. Things learned & conclusion
- Probably with more research and more time I would have done another kind of app, but this project help me me a lot to learn and for me it was worthy to develop it.
- I failed to apply some visual thinking concepts, but I learned that you don’t wake up one day with inspiration, you have to check a lot of apps, websites and be a good watcher to get inspired.
- I have to value better the challenges and resources before starting a project and to take decisions earlier to finish on time.
- Experiment more with colors (contrasts) and typography.
- Developing sensibility towards visual concepts because I failed in the design trying to take in mind that seniors have some visual problems & mobility.
I confess that I didn’t measure the challenge to test and iterate with the target or the difficulty to have a proper research. I accomplished to do the research and interviews thanks to some seniors associations (Amics de la Gent Gran and Fundació La Pedrera) but I would like to have more time to test my final design.
Other challenge that I had was applying Visual Thinking concepts. I wanted to create an app very easy to be used by seniors (my first user persona had 80 years old, after I changed to a 70 years old one) but I failed to find a delightful design for this app. My teacher, spent some time helping me to understand better Visual Thinking concepts. At the end, I realized that my problem was not thinking in the small details. Due to all my background (M.B.A. and entrepreneur, working in finance and Marketing) I have been always very problem solving and resolutive and thinking about that, probably I didn’t have time too think much about small things in all my processes. Well, it’s one of the things that I wanted when I decided to refocus my professional career doing UX/UI design: to change my mental framework to be a better professional.
As a conclusion, probably I didn’t create the perfect app for seniors with solitude problems and depression, and I hope to have time to refactorize the design in future, but I learned a lot about visual thinking, about seniors problems and that as UX/UI designers we have to think that:
“Users aged 65 and older are 43% slower at using websites and apps than users aged 21–55. we need to start thinking about senior users’ problems long before they turn 65” (https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-for-senior-citizens/)
