Reminiscence App

Reminiscence App

Hear new stories about old times, preserve memories, and have deeper conversations with loved ones. Reminiscence is a mobile application that empowers elders and their loved ones to turn their stories into a podcast.

Hear new stories about old times, preserve memories, and have deeper conversations with loved ones. Reminiscence is a mobile application that empowers elders and their loved ones to turn their stories into a podcast.

Hear new stories about old times, preserve memories, and have deeper conversations with loved ones. Reminiscence is a mobile application that empowers elders and their loved ones to turn their stories into a podcast.

Timeframe

Timeframe

Jan 2023 to April 2023

Jan 2023 to April 2023

My Role

My Role

Research and Design

Research and Design

Team

Team

James Halim, Erin Beaudoin, Jung-Yeon Lee

Group of 3 designers, 8 W

Industry

Industry

Mental Health, Social

Mental Health, Social

Stakeholder

Stakeholder

Professor of the course and Industry design mentors

Professor of the course and Industry design mentors

Tools

Tools

Figma, Miro, Protopie, Adobe Premiere

Group of 3 designers, 8 W

Goal

Goal

Design a new app (or redesign an existing app designed for mainstream users) to address a new target audience: seniors that are 75 years or older.

Design a new app (or redesign an existing app designed for mainstream users) to address a new target audience: seniors that are 75 years or older.

Why?

Why?

For this project, the team and I wanted to focus our attention to the elderly community. Creating a space to empower elders to share their wisdom, knowledge, and stories with their family members and close friends.

For this project, the team and I wanted to focus our attention to the elderly community. Creating a space to empower elders to share their wisdom, knowledge, and stories with their family members and close friends.

  1. Defining the problem

  1. Defining the problem

Elders feel disconnected with their family members and loved ones.


Family members can be too busy to visit their grandparents, or young children may grow distant and feel detached from what used to be a enjoyable moment with their grandparents.

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Secondary research to better understand the current insights of elder loneliness

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Secondary research to better understand the current insights of elder loneliness

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Secondary research to better understand the current insights of elder loneliness

  1. Driving Insights

  1. Driving Insights

Observing other apps to see what worked and what didn't work

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Key Takeaway: Most of the apps have simple and consistent layout, large and legible contrasting colors, social connections that lead to digital and physical communities

  1. Value Proposition

A focus on fostering and maintaining relationships between elders and family/friends in order to re-establish and strengthen family connections.

It's all about family

Created for users ages 65+. According to a report from the CDC, ~25% of adults aged 65 and older are lonely, causing affects of depression and anxiety. Reminiscence offers an easy to use mobile app interface which allows them to connect with their friends and family.

  1. User Research

  1. User Research

We interviewed our grandparents and friend's grandparents in order to understand their common life pain points.

Designing in Figma

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The elders provided us an insight into their lives, which was very profound and helped us gain a better understanding of what they are going through

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The elders provided us an insight into their lives, which was very profound and helped us gain a better understanding of what they are going through

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The elders provided us an insight into their lives, which was very profound and helped us gain a better understanding of what they are going through

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Although this was a project, it was a good chance for us to just talk and listen to our grandparents stories and how their day went

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Although this was a project, it was a good chance for us to just talk and listen to our grandparents stories and how their day went

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Although this was a project, it was a good chance for us to just talk and listen to our grandparents stories and how their day went

Reframing the problems as opportunities:

Reframing the problems as opportunities:

"How might we"


Support elders and their loved ones to have deeper, more meaningful conversations, more often?

Position elders as domain experts by enabling them to make their stories, memories, and anecdotes more accessible to the ones they love?

Create a repository of personal stories that younger generations can have access to, long after their elder loved one passes away?

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Creating a user persona

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Creating a user persona

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Creating a user persona

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During our critique session, we found that the current design may be too challenging for our target audience, having a photo, music and prompts feature is too much, so we as a team decided to shift our focus

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During our critique session, we found that the current design may be too challenging for our target audience, having a photo, music and prompts feature is too much, so we as a team decided to shift our focus

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During our critique session, we found that the current design may be too challenging for our target audience, having a photo, music and prompts feature is too much, so we as a team decided to shift our focus

  1. Design & Testing

We focused our early design stage into building an early prototype

We focused our early design stage into building an early prototype

Designing in Figma

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I created the information architecture with a focus on the process of recording and sharing a podcast.

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I created the information architecture with a focus on the process of recording and sharing a podcast.

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I created the information architecture with a focus on the process of recording and sharing a podcast.

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Based on team feedback and critique from our user information arch, I sketched out a early prototype of the mobile app

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Based on team feedback and critique from our user information arch, I sketched out a early prototype of the mobile app

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Based on team feedback and critique from our user information arch, I sketched out a early prototype of the mobile app

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Medium-Fidelity Insights:

Early iterations explored user engagement within the app as well as prompts in different forms. User research indicated that phone calls were a more rewarding form of social engagement for older adults, so built in ctas throughout where users could call each other. Additionally, we simplified the prompts to just written format.

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Medium-Fidelity Insights:

Early iterations explored user engagement within the app as well as prompts in different forms. User research indicated that phone calls were a more rewarding form of social engagement for older adults, so built in ctas throughout where users could call each other. Additionally, we simplified the prompts to just written format.

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Medium-Fidelity Insights:

Early iterations explored user engagement within the app as well as prompts in different forms. User research indicated that phone calls were a more rewarding form of social engagement for older adults, so built in ctas throughout where users could call each other. Additionally, we simplified the prompts to just written format.

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We created a rapid lo-fi prototype to test our initial ideas with elders so that we could have more confirmation on the design before we moved to hi-fi.

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We created a rapid lo-fi prototype to test our initial ideas with elders so that we could have more confirmation on the design before we moved to hi-fi.

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We created a rapid lo-fi prototype to test our initial ideas with elders so that we could have more confirmation on the design before we moved to hi-fi.

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We ran user-testing sessions on 5 participants, 3 senior users, and 2 college-students. I was responsible for preparing an outline of interview questions and tasks we wanted the participants to walk through.

Testing Insights

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We ran user-testing sessions on 5 participants, 3 senior users, and 2 college-students. I was responsible for preparing an outline of interview questions and tasks we wanted the participants to walk through.

Testing Insights

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We ran user-testing sessions on 5 participants, 3 senior users, and 2 college-students. I was responsible for preparing an outline of interview questions and tasks we wanted the participants to walk through.

Testing Insights

  1. Final Design

My team and I designed the final High-Fidelity prototype design with our user feedback and insights in mind

Finalizing designs

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In testing users on both Han’s and Dana’s side felt limited by needing to choose between being a recorder or a listener. We we updated the app and userflow to allow both Elders and their loved ones to record and listen. Users are all fed weekly prompts and they can record episodes that get published to the main feed.

Now everyone can record

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In testing users on both Han’s and Dana’s side felt limited by needing to choose between being a recorder or a listener. We we updated the app and userflow to allow both Elders and their loved ones to record and listen. Users are all fed weekly prompts and they can record episodes that get published to the main feed.

Now everyone can record

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In testing users on both Han’s and Dana’s side felt limited by needing to choose between being a recorder or a listener. We we updated the app and userflow to allow both Elders and their loved ones to record and listen. Users are all fed weekly prompts and they can record episodes that get published to the main feed.

Now everyone can record

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Users wanted to interact with the profile tiles on the listening page. So, we made the top of the profiles into images with clear CTAs to call or follow a user!

CTAs on profile

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Users wanted to interact with the profile tiles on the listening page. So, we made the top of the profiles into images with clear CTAs to call or follow a user!

CTAs on profile

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Users wanted to interact with the profile tiles on the listening page. So, we made the top of the profiles into images with clear CTAs to call or follow a user!

CTAs on profile

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The recording and edit function was confusing older users. We made things clearer by turning the record function into a whole screen and changing the edit capabilities to a simple review, discard, and re-record.

Simplifying the edit function

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The recording and edit function was confusing older users. We made things clearer by turning the record function into a whole screen and changing the edit capabilities to a simple review, discard, and re-record.

Simplifying the edit function

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The recording and edit function was confusing older users. We made things clearer by turning the record function into a whole screen and changing the edit capabilities to a simple review, discard, and re-record.

Simplifying the edit function

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Users were confused where their contacts were coming from so we made a clear process that scrapes their contact’s list to see if anyone else is using Reminiscence and connects them together. We are also using unique user names so that users can find each other through searching and following each other.

Sharing contacts

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Users were confused where their contacts were coming from so we made a clear process that scrapes their contact’s list to see if anyone else is using Reminiscence and connects them together. We are also using unique user names so that users can find each other through searching and following each other.

Sharing contacts

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Users were confused where their contacts were coming from so we made a clear process that scrapes their contact’s list to see if anyone else is using Reminiscence and connects them together. We are also using unique user names so that users can find each other through searching and following each other.

Sharing contacts

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We made the colour of the card lighter and more accessible. Prompts were re-written to be friendly and simple to reduce overwhelm. Copy was added to address users’ fears that this was a “permanent” recording—it’s just a test!

Friendly entrypoint

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We made the colour of the card lighter and more accessible. Prompts were re-written to be friendly and simple to reduce overwhelm. Copy was added to address users’ fears that this was a “permanent” recording—it’s just a test!

Friendly entrypoint

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We made the colour of the card lighter and more accessible. Prompts were re-written to be friendly and simple to reduce overwhelm. Copy was added to address users’ fears that this was a “permanent” recording—it’s just a test!

Friendly entrypoint

Some things I've learned…

Some things I've learned…

Some things I've learned…

Some things I've learned…

Reflection

During this project I've learned a lot. As a designer and as a active team member.


  1. Identifying the constraints: We chose to limit the scope to elder mental health because our team found that designing for elders will be the next great challenge for the next foreseeable future. We perceived mobile applications as: modern, everyone can easily use most apps with little to no problems. However, this is not always the case, a good designer considers all possible accessibility issues for all ages.


    Also, during our testing phase, we recognize that the user-testing participants in our study were not fully representative of all elders who uses a smartphone device. Thus further inclusion of diverse levels of mobile apps and mobile phones elderly users should be interviewed.


  2. Making it a frictionless experience is desirable enough: Originally we had implemented 3 core features: sharing music, photos, and prompts, in attempt to provide a differentiation factor from other similar existing mobile applications . We fell into the trap thinking that these unique features would make seniors adopt and use the app. The attempt to cram all these features fail to realize the existing pain points that our elderly users have already mentioned. As a team, we learned to re-orient ourselves and let go of ideas that may not be bringing real value to the users.


Let's make amazing projects together!

Let's make amazing projects together!

Let's make amazing projects together!

Let's make amazing projects together!

Created by Friedemann Afrom the Noun Project