Alleviating loneliness in older adults

This was a BrainStation Capstone Project, which I presented at Demo Day (December 2023). I worked on this project between September and December 2023, and was the sole UX/UI Designer and UX Researcher.

Overview

Inspired by the touching portrayal of loneliness in Pixar's "Up," I designed "Chum", an event-finding mobile app aimed at reducing loneliness in older adults.

Through user research, I identified the critical pain point of poor access to build social connections among this demographic, leading to a solution that facilitates meaningful interactions through events based on shared interests.

See how I tackled unique accessibility issues to create an inclusive and user-friendly experience for an often-overlooked population.

The problem

Loneliness is a significant and growing concern, especially in the context of an aging population. I chose this problem space to address a societal issue affecting the physical and mental well-being of older adults.

With these stats in mind, I determined my project goal:

How might we help older adults feel less lonely and be more socially connected to decrease their health risks?

My hypothesis is that older adults experience loneliness because age-appropriate social groups that facilitate meaningful connections, such as communities and clubs, are inaccessible to this population.

Uncovering behaviors and attitudes

How will I know if I’m right or wrong?

To validate (or invalidate πŸ‘€) my hypothesis, I conducted user interviews to find out more about older adults' experiences.

I interviewed 3 older adults who were:

  1. Experiencing feelings of loneliness
  2. Between 50-65 years old
    This is the age range of older adults with the highest smartphone usage.
  3. Living in an urban area
    Those living in rural areas have distinct issues facing digital connectivity, so urban dwellers were a more appropriate user group.

Finding a common theme

What does it all mean?

Eager to determine a pattern across the users, I sorted through all key quotes using an affinity map.

My user interviews highlighted an important distinction between how social networks formed when we're younger vs. when we're older.

If you think about your own friends, they were likely made through common ground like shared interests, school, or work. However, for older adults, there are few organized groups that cater towards their age range, so it’s much more difficult to establish these connections.

This key theme of common ground is what I decided to focus on for the rest of my design process. I sought to explore a digital solutions that could meet the specific needs of lonely older adults by helping them create common ground with others.

Time to pivot!

With my specific theme of common ground in mind, I pivoted my project goal:

How might we help older adults feel less lonely and be more socially connected to decrease their health risks?

to

How might we help older adults create common ground with others to build social connections and feel less lonely?

Understanding the target user

What do my users look like?

After choosing to focus on a theme of common ground, I created a persona to embody the research I've conducted and help me figure out what solution to build. This would also help any stakeholders understand what the target user would look like.

A simplified persona highlighting one behavior, pain point, and motivation
A simplified version of the persona, Randy Olsen

Identifying opportunities

How does someone like Randy experience loneliness?

I wanted to better understand how older adults such as Randy currently experience loneliness. What do they need to reach their goal of social connection? I created an experience map to visualize the path that they take to reach this goal and identify opportunities that my digital solution can solve.

I followed the experience that a user interviewee outlined, using social media to alleviate his feeling of loneliness.

This helped me identify gaps in existing digital solutions and helped me narrow down on one key opportunity to focus on β€” connecting Randy to interest-based communities for older adults, so that he can access these groups more easily.

Solutioning

Now that my problem space was more refined, I was ready to begin defining the functionality of a potential digital solution.

Deciding on a task flow

What features should I design?

I brainstormed and categorized 30 user stories to identify valuable features for connecting Randy with older adults who share his interests.

One key epic, Social Events, stood out. This describes finding and interacting with posts about events that are inclusive of older adults. It directly addresses a pain point that users experience β€” a lack of organized groups for older adults.
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So, I decided to focus on user stories under the epic of Social Events for my subsequent design process.

I then translated my user stories into tasks to narrow down on the exact functionalities.
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As an older person experiencing loneliness...


Based on the tasks, I determined the main task flow of finding and confirming attendance for an event for my solution. This involved the following 5 screens:

Putting pen to paper

What would my solution look like?

I've never designed for older adults before, so I first sought out inspiration. This gave me a better idea of information architecture and UI that older adults are more familiar with.

My sources of design inspiration
A visual summary of my inspiration board

With consideration of my inspiration board, I explored different concepts and started to sketch out what my task flow could look like.

These are my most compelling concepts and how I refined them:

Let's go digital!

How does my chosen design concept fare?

I put my Figma skills to use and turned my sketches into grayscale wireframes.

Before adding color and interactions, I wanted to know how the solution would perform, so I tested my wireframes with users.

I recruited 10 users across 2 testing rounds. The users were students or professionals between the ages of 24-27, from a mix of different socioeconomic backgrounds.

I asked users to complete tasks such as:
β€’ Browse event categories
β€’ View more information about an event
β€’ RSVP to an event

User testing results and changes to the design

Across both testing rounds, the prototype was highly successful as 59/60 tasks were completed smoothly.

A huge caveat here is that the testing couldn't be done with a population of older adults, so I had to take my results with a grain of salt. I would expect a higher error rate, likely surrounding accessibility issues or icon recognition.

I implemented high priority design changes according to the results. This included:

Displaying more information about other users

Did you know that older adults are more trusting than younger adults? Also, from a business standpoint, adding layers of security helps reduce user safety risks.

Making the design more inclusive

For example, ensuring all icons have text accompanying it. Older adults take longer to comprehend flat icons, which can be mediated with text labels.

Ensuring better consistency across screens

Reliable UI supports better UX!

See the befores and afters of each screen:

Designing for older adults

Time to inject colors and interactions into my prototype!

There were lots of things to consider when designing for an often-neglected population of the digital world. I stuck to the WCAG 2.0 guidelines, and did some research on user interface design for older folks to aid this process.

To make my solution accessible, I focused on the following elements:

High color contrast

Our contrast sensitivity declines as we age, which means older adults find it more difficult to see low contrast patterns. So, I challenged myself to use the highest WCAG AAA standard for color contrasts, which is a ratio of 1 to 7, when choosing text and background colors.

Simple color palette

To keep things visually simple for older adults, I stuck to a monochromatic color palette with few accent colors. I took inspiration from Facebook's design system, where they use blue to indicate interactive elements, but greyscale colors for all others.

Large and hierarchical typography

As I'm designing for iOS, I decided to opt for the SF Pro font family. From a performance and implementation standpoint, it would be the fastest to use a system font. SF Pro also offers different fonts to visually cue different pieces of information.

We lose visual acuity as we age, so small text is harder to read and it's more difficult to distinguish between interface elements that similar. To ensure that the text is clear and there is enough visual hierarchy between styles, I started the body text at 16px and went up in 8-px increments.

Iconography with labels

Even though older adults tend to prefer skeuomorphic icons compared to flat icons, flat icons are more common in digital solutions.

Additionally, with declining visual acuity, users may have more difficulty seeing thin lines and focusing on hard edges. The amount of graphic details with skeuomorphic icons may be imperceivable on a mobile app.

To keep things simple, I chose an icon set that is filled with the same color as the stroke color, with small corner radiuses. These icons are paired with text labels, which could help mitigate accessibility issues with flat icons.

UI Library

How do I ensure visual consistency?

To establish consistent design patterns, styles, and components across my product, I created a UI library that contains all of the visual elements used in my solution.

My library followed the Atomic Design Methodology.

This was my first experience with any type of design system, and even though this was a solo project, it highlighted the importance of documentation across cross-functional teams in the industry. Having a UI library actually sped up my process of injecting high-fidelity design elements!

Walkthrough the app with me!

How would someone use this solution to alleviate their feelings of loneliness?

Want to try it out for yourself? View the Figma prototype.

Design impact and future thinking

Loneliness doesn't discriminate by age, yet its impact on the health of our older generation is profound.

In that case, β€œHow might we help older adults create common ground with others to build social connections and feel less lonely?”

My solution, Chum, offers one perspective to that question. Chum provides a community for older adults to connect and attend events with, creating common ground through shared interests and hobbies.

Learnings

1. Great UX necessitates accessibility and inclusion

Especially as the digital world grows to become more inclusive, I believe this knowledge will serve me well for the rest of my career. Accessible and inclusive design make products better not just for older adults, but for everyone.

2. Keeping the user at the center of each step is crucial
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Every time I was faced with a difficult design decision, I got out of my slump by referring back to user needs. I can proudly say that everything I designed was intentional and informed by the user in some way, from how I determined the task flow to the use of colors for different states.

Next steps

β€’ Creating an onboarding flow
β€’ More user testing with older adults

Older users are more careful and attentive than their younger counterparts, so an onboarding tutorial that is clear, straightforward, and easy to find, would be able to offer them a more successful user journey.

Ultimately, this is just one project out of many β€” in the future, I would be keen to work on projects that allow me to explore digital solutions for older adults, or other vulnerable populations, to improve my knowledge on making UX accessible to all.

And that’s a wrap! If you have any questions or feedback, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Or, view another project:
Helping households manage food waste