Website helping to increase opportunities for community connection in older adults
By: Kuanysh Kassenova
Tags: Case Study, Accessibility, UX Design, UX Research, Service Design

The Brief

There is a need for reciprocal community connections to reduce isolation particularly among seniors.

Volunteer systems are too rigid, not providing opportunity for organic community connection.

The website will help to increase opportunities for community connection in older adults; value and celebrate seniors’ skills and knowledge; and support service providers in finding opportunities to share information about the gifts and wishes that exist in their community.

The team

Timeline : 3 weeks

Design Process

The Client

Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House (MPNH) & South Vancouver Neighbourhood House (SVNH)

Supports families, children and youth of all ages, newcomers, immigrants, and neighbours;

Helps build safe, healthy and engaged neighbourhoods;

Offers workshops, volunteer activities and special events, etc.;

Connects people.

Buddy Board

Buddy Board

The Buddy Board is a way to provide a skill sharing service for users to post offers and requests to meet up with others to share various skills or help each other out.

The Problem

Many seniors who use the MPNH live alone and in isolation.

Since many cannot access the physical board at the MPNH, a digital presence is needed to provide those users with access from home.

The Solution

A website that would entice older adults and senior service providers to hare skills and connect to each other.

Goals

Business Goal

Acquisition

Create and test a platform for community connection

Share information primarily among service providers about the requests and offers in the community

Better integrate volunteer infrastructure across Vancouver

User Goal

Connect with neighbours

Be engaged in the community

Informal volunteering

User-friendly

Feel safe

Project Goal

Create a platform that connects older adults in MPNH and SVNH through support, sharing skills and interest.

Research

Canadian Census data showed that about 24.6% of the population aged 65 and over now live alone.

10 to 15% of adults 65 years or older living in the community suffer from depression.

Approximately 50% of people over the age of 80 report feeling lonely.

As many as 44% of seniors living in residential area in Canada have been diagnosed with depression or show symptoms of depression.

Comparative Analysis

Buddy Up

A community board designed to share skills & interests. Buddy Up provides a free and accessible platform for people who share skills and interests to connect and start doing new things together.

Kudoz

Kudoz is an experience platform connecting people with and without disabilities to splendid things to do, together. Host or book the experiences you want, at a time and date that works for you.

Simbi

On Simbi, you can exchange services with other members or offer to “pay” them for their time using your credits.

Skillshare

Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes in design, business, tech, and more. Anyone can join the millions of members in our community to learn cutting-edge skills, network with peers and discover new opportunities.

Meet up

Meetup is a platform for finding and building local communities. People use Meetup to meet new people, learn new things, find support, get out of their comfort zones, and pursue their passions, together.

Domain Research

All of these competitors showcase How It Works .

. All of them, except Buddy up website, have Skills, Search and Sign up features.

Comparative Analysis

Survey findings

We conducted 34 survey responses. 47.1% of them were seniors between 55 and 64 years old. 38.2 % respondants were between 65 and 74 years.

Survey Findings

In our survey, 84% of the responders mentioned they are interested in sharing skills and /or knowledge with others willing to learn.

Survey Findings

To the question

How comfortable are you with sharing basic personal information (name, phone, and email) online?

53.1% of respondents would not share their personal information online.

Survey Findings

What information are you willing to share online?

Survey Findings

How comfortable are you using electronic devices such as computers and smart phones?

Survey Findings

Contextual Inquiry

We started our research phase by visiting MPNH and conducting interviews.

We’ve interviewed 5 seniors and 3 service providers.

Physical Buddy Board

Interview Findings

There are some of our interview key takeaways:

Interview Findings

Interview Findings

Interview Findings

Usability Challenges for Seniors

According to Nielsen Norman Group’s research for vision and dexterity, 100% would indicate no problems using websites.

It’s obviously important to recognize that even young people have physical and cognitive limitations. But these issues are much more severe for older users.

Design Issues:

Readability

Clickability

Behavioural Issues:

Hesitation

Discouragement

Offer Supportive (and Forgiving) Design

Using large text for them, is especially important for two reasons: 1) to ensure readability, and 2) to make them more prominent targets for clicking.

The Norman Nelson’ research studies, 45% of seniors showed behaviours that indicated they were uncomfortable trying new things or hesitant to explore. For example, when they failed in their first attempt at a task, some seniors were hesitant to try alternate paths.

Seniors, however, have a harder time remembering which parts of a website they’ve visited and are thus more likely to waste time repeatedly returning to the same place.

Seniors sometimes have trouble with the basic mechanics of using computers and the web. For example, 45% of seniors had trouble managing browser tabs and multiple windows. Other seniors, however, were web virtuosos and confidently used advanced features like ctrl-F to jump to keywords within the current page.

Prototype Considerations

Based on our research, these are some of our prototype considerations

Large font sizes

Provide senior-friendly filters

Minimize number of pages

Minimize scrolling

Minimize personal information required

P lanning

After conducting research through different methods, we started the 2nd stage of the design process which is the planning where we identify the persona, feature list, creating site map & user flow for the website.

Affinity Diagram

We collected the data from our research, sort them and created an affinity diagram. The diagram helped us to understand our target audience, users goals, desires, and frustrations.

Affinity Diagram

Affinity Diagram

Feature List

We organized our feature set prioritizing commonalities from our surveys and interviews, as well as features that would be necessary for the website to function effectively.

We decided that Workshops, News about upcoming events, Newsletter subscription, Online chat and Support are not needed.

This formed our MVP.

Feature List

Persona

Here is the persona we came up with.

Barb Simms, 70 years old.