Happy Mail A communication system for the elderly aimed at 'bringing the joy of receiving a letter back into an email' .......................................................................................................................................................
Course:Graphical User Interface, 'GUI for an elderly care context' Duration: 2 weeks Faculty: Alex Wiethoff Visiting faculty:Neils Clausen-Stuck (designit) Group members:Kevin Cannon, Siddharth Muthyala Role: Conept Generation, Initial Scenario Building, Paper Prototyping, User Testing, Idea Generation for UI, Video Filming & Editing, Final Presentation .......................................................................................................................................................
What is it
After doing user research about the needs of elderly people we decided to focus our idea on improving communication between people living in elderly homes and the outside world. As a group we felt that it was a great shame that the elderly do not benefit from the internet and email like we do. Our core aim and value we wanted to create for the elderly was:
“how do you bring the joy of receiving a letter into an email”
The result was Happy Mail: a portable touch screen device that allows elderly people to receive emails and SMS messages from family in a context that uses a graphical user interface that is visually familiar to them - one that they can understand easily.
Playful concept video for HappyMail
The elderly person receives their ‘mail’ every morning from a device, creating a milestone in their day, similar to when a postman would deliver mail. We hope to enable less isolation from the family and make the elderly feel more involved in their lives. It allows friends and family to use quick methods of communication that are intuitive to them (text &email) without imposing it on the elderly person.
We wanted to have a strong mental model of receiving, reading and writing letters throughout our concept. The home screen for the device is a writing table where letters will accumulate when you receive mail. The visuals and sizes of the mail illustrates the content. For example, a letter on the desktop is a normal email, a package on the desktop would be an email with a photo attachment and a note on the desktop would be a SMS message.
We also added an address book as the entry point to writing new messages, and a storage box function where you can store old ‘letters.
Process
During this project we used a user centered design process. We broke it into three areas: Research, Development and Execution. We used a range of design methods through our process from observations and interviews in the research stage to brainstorming, storyboarding, experience prototyping, paper prototyping and user testing during the development stage. In the final stages of the project we used a range of techniques to illustrate our idea and tell a story. We fully designed the GUI for the device and mapped out the functions using a flow diagram. We created detailed scenario storyboards and used film to create a 30 second taster video.
Analysis or User insights from the elderly homes
User testing paper prototypes in an elderly home
Testing the usability of an iphone with an elderly person
Analysis or User insights from the elderly homes
User testing paper prototypes in an elderly home