Silver Connections
Silver Connections is an app that is meant to connect elderly individuals around their interests and hobbies. A diminishing social network and reduced physical activity are leading causes of memory loss and dementia in the elderly and this app seeks to mitigate those issues.
Literature Research & User Interviews
To begin the project, an extensive literature review on cognitive decline was conducted. I learned of many different causes of cognitive decline in the elderly as well as many different interventions. My goal was to present an intervention that was holistic and did not have a pharmaceutical component.
I also interviewed 10 elderly individuals (65+) and learned about their struggles with cognitive decline and struggles with social activities. This led to the idea for the Silver Connections app.
Ideation
The ideation phase consisted of participatory design sessions and sketching sessions to begin to uncover solutions for the problem-space and diminishing social context in the elderly community. The solution would need to have accessibility at the forefront and allow users to easily connect and communicate.
Onboarding
Onboarding for the elderly is a crucial step in the process of providing value with this app. The goal was to meet color contrast needs and to present essential copy in a large enough format.
Usability Testing
After producing a prototype, I tested the application with 5 participants and gained feedback which I applied to updating the design of the app. The next steps are to continue updating the design and procure seed funding for the development of the solution.
