See Prototype



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Groupy

Help the elderly people to group up with like-minded friends
Project Summary

Course: Design Thinking Fall 2021
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Instructor: Professor Yanyue Yuan

Timeline: 3 Weeks
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Softwares: Figma, Figjam, Illustrator, Canva
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My Role: Team Leader, designer
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‍Teammates: Eadin Wang, Siyuan Wang, Eva He
Project Details

NYU Shanghai has a close connection with Memory Cafe记忆咖啡馆, which is located in Yangjing Residential District, Pudong, Shanghai, China. Luckily, I practiced primary and secondary research with both the elderly people and the young volunteers in the cafe. Moreover, in order to get to know the old generation more, I interviewed my grandparents, which brought me some cherished moments. The results show that elderly people are suffering from lots of problems, including depression, loneliness, mobility limitations, low vision, and more. These problems ignited a question that my group wanted to research: How might we help the older generation to attend more social activities so that they could live happier life?
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Then, we made an application, Groupy, a mobile application designed for the older generation in Yangjing District to find like-minded friends and attend more social activities at Memory Cafe. ‍In Groupy, we optimize the interfaces and operations especially for senior people who might suffering from low vision, declined motor skills and more. 




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HMW Statements
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How might we help the senior to attend more social activities?
How might we make the connection between young and old generation closer?
Secondary Research
We started the project by conducting quantitative and qualitative research on the elder people's status quo in China.
Aging problem in China
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age of 65
Aging, an inevitable process, is commonly measured by chronological age and, as a convention, a person aged 65 years old or more is often referred to as 'elderly'.
13.5%
The population of people over 65 years old in China is around 13.5% in 2022, due to longer life expectancy and declining fertility rates.
336 million
The United Nations projects that there will be 366 million older Chinese adults by 2050, which is substantially larger than the current total U.S. population (331 million).
Mobility limitations
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Mobility limitations are affecting approximately 35% of persons aged 70 and the majority of persons over 85 years.
There are lots of elderly people who are suffering from mobility limitations; some cannot travel alone anymore, and some people even couldn't walk freely so they need to stay at home.
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Mobility limitations have been associated with an increased fall, disability, hospitalization, and mortality risk as well as decreased quality of life, and poor psycho-social health next to declining function.



Factors impacting elderly's mental health
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The rapid change in lifestyles
Most of the elderly had experienced the Culture Revolution, poverty, famine and wars during 1960s.

However, nowadays, China’s rapid economic growth has been accompanied by rapid changes in lifestyles. They not only need to face the new values, social structure, and other ideological changes, but also need to fit into the digitalized world.
Declined physical condition
Without being able to taking care of themselves, the elderly are very likely to be diagnosed with depression. It is very common among the old population that they could not walk, eat or dress up on their own.

There are 40 million(16.3%) elderly who cannot take care of themselves in China.
The empty-nester
There are around 38% over 60 years old population (100 billion) are empty-nest people.

Living without the companion from family and friends, the empty-nesters are not only experiencing loneliness and low self-esteem, but also feeling left behind by the rapid changing society.
Primary Research
We conducted interviews with 20+ people, from young generation to old generation, who are volunteering or working in the cafe.

After finishing the secondary research, we wanted to talk to our target users, people from Memory Cafe. We got to know about how Memory Cafe functions as a center for the whole Yangjing District.

Interview
We not only talked to the elderly people in the cafe, but also got the chance to interview Guodong Ma, one of the founders of Memory Cafe.

Affinity Mapping
After interviewing the elderly, I conducted an affinity mapping exercise to help identify similarities and relationships between all of the information.

Using FigJam, I ran through the exercise and surprisingly found out that there are much more problems than I thought. Then, I summarized the key insights.
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Key insights
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01
People always ignore the elderly's self-esteem. 
They want to take care of themselves without bothering their family members, so they have the strong desire to stay healthy.
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The elderly are lonely in the bustling cities, and they really need more social interactions.
Lots of them move to the first-tier cities with their children, so everything is new to them, and they have no friends.
Community activities are good opportunities for the elderly to develop hobbies and make friends with others.
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The generation gap could be solved through enhancing the communication between the young and the old generation.
Everything is digitalized, and it is hard for the older generation to adapt to those huge changes.
However, elderly people would love to have more communication with the younger generation, not only could they build the closer relationship with their grandchildren, but also they could catch up the trend and learn new things.
04
The mental problem is normal among the elderly.
It is important to let them do regular exercises and talk with people at their same ages. Moreover, we should tell them it is normal to feel sad, and do not be afraid of reaching out for help.
Consolidating Key Insights into 2 personas
I created two personas. One is the based on the information that I gathered from Guodong and other younger people. The other is based on the elderly people that I interviewed with in Memory Cafe.
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Reframing the problem statement
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How might we make fully use of the resources and activities in Memory Cafe to benefit the elderly people in Yangjing District?
Service for elderly people:
Radiate from Memory Cafe to the communities at Yangjing Residential District
Memory Cafe is the "center point" that provides the activities and services for all the communities inside of the Yangjing District.

Our mission is to connect people in this area, and make fully use of the resources in Memory Cafe to help more elderlies to live colorful lives.
Sketches ‍
On the left side, we did the sketch of the Groupy Application for the senior people. Even though younger and older generations are both our target users, for now, we only focus on designing the app for the elderly. Here are two main functions:
1. Share locations
2. Join activities at Memory Cafe.

On the right side, we sketched out the space design for Memory Cafe. Since we went to the Memory Cafe before, we know all the available rooms in the cafe.

Also, we put two pictures here. The picture on the left is two elderly staff working at the front desk to make coffee; the picture on the right side is the plants in the out-door garden.
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Sitemap for application
Before jumping into creating the prototype, our group created the framework/sitemap for Groupy.

In it, we sort out the four major pages in the application: Chat, Map, Activities, and Profile.
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Usability Testing &
First Prototype
After building a plan and task list, I invited an elderly staff at Memory Cafe to go through the whole process.

Although it was only one test, it proved worth the effort. While observing she going through all the steps, I noticed that she was frustrated when signing up. Here's her feedback.

"I'm having short-terms memory loss, and it is quit overwhelming when I need to fill in all the information at one page."

Therefore, I gained great insights and drastically improved the sign-up flow by separating it into different parts and allow users to go back to previous steps whenever they want.

Specifying design elements
01. Color Specification

When choosing colors, we considered that our users might have low-vision or colorblindness. The 7:1 color contrast between text and solid background is ideal for the elderly. The main color Blue is perfect for people who might suffering from red-green colorblind.
02. Font Specification
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To make the content easily to read, the font sizes are larger than 19px. As for the font choice, Sans-serif fonts are less crowed, more straightforward. Therefore, we picked Roboto as the only font type in Groupy.
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Final products
Part 1: Space optimization for Memory Cafe
The entire space of the cafe could be separated into 4 different purposes:
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1. Coffee Space & Arts Room: elderly & young volunteers can work as the barista, and they can also draw in this room. Their works could be displayed in the room.
2. Gaming Room: in it, people can do exercises or play group games together. Some volunteering activities could be held in the gaming room.
3. Gardening Room: another in-door space is for the elderly to keep plants, since there are lots of old people love doing this. Also, there's a small out-door garden in Memory Cafe, which could be used as the garden as well.

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Advantages adopting the space optimization plan
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01
Having the space that enables the old and young generation spend time and attend activities together can narrow the generation gap.
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The elderly can find their hobbies here, including drawing and gardening.
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The elderly can have more social interactions by volunteering in the cafe. Attending the volunteering work can also help them to find the sense of self-worth and confidence.
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Part 2: Groupy Application
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