rockafellas
is a senior community radio where the elder can easily share snippets of their sentiments with others. Think audible twitter for the seniors.
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Practise : Beyond the pocket computer @ CIID
Timeline: 1 week | July 2020
Project team: Ana, Martin, Nitin, Shin
Role: Concept visuals, narrative
FULL CONCEPT VIDEO ↓
HOW DID WE GET THERE?
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The challenge was to create a post-pocket-computer experience that improves on an existing smartphone experience, based on the problem statement each team chose to tackle.
Our team was interested in empowerment of the aging community and found an opportunity area for that target group.
Initially we wanted to focus in the health and safety aspects for the elderly. After interviewing some of the seniors around us, we were struck by the statement said by one of our interviewee:
“Our ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life to the very end. It's not the health that we are worried about, but how we can live our life to the fullest.”
Older persons are increasingly seen as contributors to development, whose abilities to act for the betterment of themselves and their societies should be woven into policies and programmes at all levels.
Yet, there's limited options or accessible platform for them to share their thoughts, sentiments, wisdoms, and experience.
After few more interviews to understand the needs of the senior community, we repivot our problem statement to
"Senior citizens want to feel heard but there's limited options or platform to share their thoughts/sentiments."
We started ideating a few concepts and finally landed on the idea of a collective radio. We realized all of the brainstorm ideas are skewed towards encouraging socialization and battling aging loneliness, thus the team agreed that a community radio seem to be able to hit both of the nails.
The team went on to bodystorm the idea to play out the experience of how a community radio could work. We also tried the face aging app to alter our appearance for a more convincing narrative.
↑ using AR filter to immerse in the experience
video prototyping process
Due to the pandemic restrictions, we only got to co-create with our close senior contacts to gather feedbacks on the concept. One of it was the concern about talking too long on the channel. Therefore, we set a 45s recording limit for audio posting as a creative constrain. The radio is only broadcasted in a hyperlocal range to keep the content curated to maintain a cozy community.
For physical prototyping, we found the shape of a guitar effects has a good form fit as a portable radio that can be placed anywhere in the house. It even fits comfortably in the size of the palm. It has a clear and simple one glance interface to contain all the functions a collective radio needs to have, and tangible knobs and buttons that provides easy navigation for the seniors.
wizard-of-oz
As the project was developed during the Covid-19's social distancing and isolation, due to the health consideration it was not recommended to involve any elderly in the video shooting or live interviews process.
The team thought of experimenting with the aging filter found in the FaceApp. The result was quite convincing. While it was possible to use the app to convert the video version of the images, it was quite time intensive and laborious to do that.
As we only had 1 day to produce the final video, the team made a parallax animation method using just static photos to get the context across.
bonus audible - from seniors with love
The team were eager to know the real content senior citizens would love to share if they are given this collective radio platform. We managed to get a few seniors to contribute their audible thoughts to the radio collective and were really pleased of how it sounded like.
key learnings
1
Audible gives a richer presence than the screenbased visual feedback, which is effective when it comes to battling loneliness
2
Not everything requires a screen/smart phone solution
3
Never assume about what you think people would need. Always start a conversation with the people you are designing for.
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