Get Old. Stay Alone. It's okay.
You always have accompany.
SAGE is an online interest-based live chat community embedded into Amazon Echo Dot and mobile phone. Users in cross-generations come to listen to or talk on a live channel in group of 3. By knowing followings, bookmarked channels and locations, SAGE recommend users topics and people who are more likely to become friends with. We expect SAGE to be a starting point for older adults with social isolation to find new friends and build closer and longer relationships.
SAGE will help older adults:
- raise self-esteem and confidence
- share wisdom with other generations
- advocate for themselves within their local democracy
- reduce health care costs by 50%
Challenge
Last New Year Eve, as one of few students left in Ithaca -- the college town, I went to watch La La Land as celebration. The entire theater was fully packed with audiences, 75% of whom were older adults in couple or single. Not only is home to Cornell, Ithaca is also home to retiring group.
However, older adults are the most susceptible to social isolation--a lack of contact between an individual and society-- due to living alone, health decline, unemployment, limited access to transportation, or loss of family members. Social isolation can have grave effects on mental and physical health.
We aim to provide an opportunity for older adults to be more socially connected, in an effort to improve their well-being, and reduce the risks of social isolation.
Research
Within our research, the main problem that we found was that older adults experience this social isolation when their social interaction options are limited by location. This is because a smaller selection of people to interact with, means a smaller chance for the meaningful interactions that lead to close relationships.
Current solutions focus on the segment of older adults that are educated, have family members, or are mobile, but the more at risk groups are not highly educated, have little or no contact with family members, and have mobility limitations due to physical ailment or lack of transportation. Thus, we decided to target on groups at the edge.
Social Isolation Pyramid
Our interviews with researchers on aging populations informed us that with age, adults shift their social priorities and have different social needs. It is more important for older adults to have smaller social circles that include strong ties to family members and close friends, than to have larger social circles that include many weak ties.
From this information we were able to create a persona that generalizes the demographic traits and social habits of our target users.
Target User Persona
DEFINITION
Based on the target users, we obtain 8 key findings from user research and list corresponding design strategies. As follows,
1. Older adults prefer closeness over quantity for their social circles.
Objective 1: Facilitate the establishment of close relationships between users interacting with our design.
2. Social interactions for older adults are constrained by the degree to which they can be mobile.
Objective 2: Allow the solution to work when the user is stationary.
3. Older adults make use of modern communication technologies differently than other age groups.
Objective 3: Implementation should introduce familiar technology and should not require the user to develop new habits.
4. Older adults care about online privacy.
Objective 4: Allow the user to monitor information they want to share with others and keep personal information safe.
5. Older adults love to talk with college students.
Objective 5: Solution should allow older adults to interact with other generations.
6: Older adults like "back and forth" dialogues over messages.
Objective 6: Allow the user have real talks or similar structure.
7: Older adults prefer to talk to people with similar interests.
Objective 7: Solution should offer older adults interested topics.
8: People prefer not to cut into others' conversation.
Objective 8: Solution should ease the user’s transition into a conversation.
Based on all design objectives, there should be a platform for older adults to have real conversations with people in any generation. The platform needs to be embedded into a technical product which is easy to use for older adults who are stationary or mobility impaired. Furthermore, the platform ought to help older adults find appropriate people for further connections.
Design
As a result, we designed SAGE. SAGE is an interests-based live chat community. Users come to listen to or talk on a live channel in group of 3. By knowing followings, bookmarked channels and locations, we recommend users topi" and people who are more likely to become friends with. We expect Sage to be a starting point for older adults with social isolation to find new friends and build closer and longer relationships.
1. Tools and Platforms
SAGE is an application built on two kinds of devices -- Amazon Echo Dot and mobile phone.
- Target Users: SAGE Alexa
Considering older adults’ using habits, Echo Dot is the optimal option. First, Echo Dot is a palm-size smart speaker on the shelf. Even for older adults having mobility problems, it's very easy to reach out (Objective 2). Second, unlike using other popular technical gadgets, older adults interact with Echo just by talking to the built-in AI - Alexa. Talking to Alexa is as natural as talking to a real person (Objective 3). For older adults living alone, they hardly can talk to other people. Alexa serves as everyday companionship.
Not only does Alexa keep older adults company, she will become an agency to interact with SAGE. With certain commands, older users can order Alexa to achieve any SAGE function. When talking to people on SAGE (LED lights are green), users can tap buttons on Echo Dot" to awake Alexa (LED light shows blue). Moreover, there would be audio effects as warm reminders.
- Secondary Users: SAGE Mobile
SAGE doesn’t only focus on older generations. Instead, people from any generations are very welcome. On SAGE, every live channel has a topic. Users join any channel based on feelings to the topic. SAGE encourages spiritual communications disregard of ages. In this case, older users have much higher chance interacting with "her generations (Objective 5).
Different from SAGE Alexa, SAGE Mobile performs more visual interfaces, navigating users to explore on the platform. Whereas, SAGE Mobile users communicate mainly by voices. Comparing to texts, voices make people feel closer; comparing to videos, voices can hide them from screens. SAGE bridges users from any devices via audio interactions.
SAGE: An Interest-based Live Chat Community | Concept Design
2. Concept
SAGE addresses our design objectives by incorporating the following key concepts:
- Live Channels
In order to enable users to have conversations that were similar to in- person conversations, we designed our system around live, real-time conversations that function very similarly to talking on the phone (Objective 6). This synchronous set up enables a natural back and forth dialogue that older adults are comfortable and familiar with. SAGE live channels can also be listened to by a user, without that user being in the call. These listeners are listed in the order of close relations to you like similar bookmarks, location and followings. Listeners can also create their own talks as subgroups, so they can talk with their friends about what they hear in the main channel.
- 3-Person Conversations
Each channel has at most three users who are able to speak within the conversation. Limiting the conversation size to 3 allows everyone the opportunity to be heard. It allows each participant to get to know the others in the group and therefore facilitates personal connections (Objective 1).
- Interest-Based Topic
Each channel is centered around a specific topic as defined by the channel’s creator. SAGE allows all users to discuss topi" of interest to them (Objective 7). This is beneficial because it makes the system an appealing place to engage with community, due to the fact that users can curate the content they interact with to what they like. This also acts as a good starting point for new users to talk with people they do not know. Users can bond over a common interest.
- Community
SAGE connects individuals within a geographic community onto an online community. This is done by allowing users to follow each other, invite each other to join channels, and send personal messages. Users can initially begin to have recurring conversations with similar people by bookmarking channels. These functions link users to each !her and allow them to keep track of people on SAGE who they get along with well. This affords the establishment of relationships and enables the creation of consistent communication with a group of people the our older adults desire (Objective 1).
3. Other features
- Rounds
Every 20 minutes of conversation we have a 5 minutes break allowing !her listeners to join the channel if there is available seat. From perspective of people who already in the conversation, we have the alert from Alexa as well as the mobile app to remind users they may have other people joining the group or they may politely leave the talk during the break. From the !her side, people who want to join the group will not be bothered with the worry that their entries may interrupt conversation. This design comes from the feedback that people care about etiquettes. They would like a easy transition to join a talk just like what a face-to-face conversation can be (Objective 6).
- Privacy
What we learned from the older interviewees is that they care about privacy. It is true that internet privacy is a concern for all of us, but for older adults particularly, they have more concerns about their information online. Thus, we implement our design with public/private switch buttons for the group to decide if they want their channels to be opened for public that other listeners can share their talks or private so no one but themselves can hear their voices (Objective 4). Moreover, since channels are live, although we have signup verification to minimize the risk of having unreliable person or spams in Sage, there will be probably some spams, frauds or offensive contents. So, we add the "function of blocking people so they will not able to join the same conversation with you or seeing your profile.
uSER EXPERIENCE
SAGE Alexa
SAGE Mobile
SAGE Mobile - Low Fidelity Prototype
SAGE Mobile - High Fidelity Prototype I
SAGE Mobile - High Fidelity Prototype II