This week Me, Sreejith, Brian presented n the topic design for elderly, we divided the three main categories in the topic like Current problems elderly people face and the current technologies by brian followed by me explaining about the future technologies and innovations for elderly like wearables and robots and lastly sreejith explaining about the strategies for making cities accessible for elderly. we organised 4 actvities for 4 groups. Brian came up with a wonderful activity ideas and i suggested one activity and sreejith one. the activity i proposed was about to design an interactive device for elderly interested in travelling to new places. After the presentation we moved on to the activity , I was the facilitator for group 1 and being facilitator was weird for me ,
In this Group 1 activity we wanted to make participants to experience the use of role playing technique in design for elderly as it would help them to come up with really interesting and cool ideas. The task for the team was to develop an device and present the features of the device by role playing. The design brief was about four friends with approximate age of 70 interested in travelling to places and their difficulties in using modern technology. The design brief given to the team is below:
Design Brief:
Donald 70, Henry 71, Martha 69, Noah 72 are best friends for more than 30years, from joining the army to getting retired. They have always dreamed about going on a vacation to Amsterdam after they retire from service. They were planning it for along time. But none of them have used complex apps, they hardly use mobile phones for calling their children and other basic things; but are quick learners. Design a device that could help make their trip a hassle-free and memorable one.
Come up with a script that explains the features of the device in different situations.Use the role-playing technique to illustrate the functionalities and the interactions.
The final output of my group activity was really greater than my expectations, they developed and interactive travel booth which is used for the purpose of navigation and tour plan guide for elderly people with is not quite good with mobile technology
After 15mins of brainstorming the planned to put all the key points in the brainstorming and planned to design an tour planning and guiding booth. The concept behind the booth developed is to ensure elderly people to access it easily and in an enjoyable manner. The booth was designed to be place in a hotel lobby and guest can interact with it. As the target audience in developing the machine is above 65, the interface changes according to the age and opinions of the users. The booth has voice feedback which elderly people would find easy to communicate than a touch screen. The additional features includes the printing of their own tour plan. As the team planned the booth to be placed in many locations , even if the users tends to lose it he can go to the nearby location and print it again. The next part of this activity after they came up with the product is developing a script to demonstrate the features of the device. This was a challenging task for the group members as they can only discuss the script using google docs and share their opinions through zoom but the team did an excellent work and came up with a very good script.
