This is a story about our elderly, loneliness, and isolation during the pandemic.
When the Corona pandemic hit Sweden in 2020 it quickly became clear that people aged 70+ were most vulnerable and were affected the hardest. Older people in Sweden were told to isolate themselves, a ban on visits to elderly care homes was implemented and daily activities for senior citizens were shut down.
At the same time, younger Swedes have been using technology to bridge the social distancing gap with social events shifting to online tools. After work, book clubs and game nights have moved into the digital world.
The challenge was to figure out how the learnings from digitalizing social events during the pandemic can benefit and enrich the lives of elders in a post-pandemic society.
School project -
Experimentation module
Duration: March — April 2020
Role: UX/UI Designer
Tools: Figma
The target group(s)
Primary target group
Even before the pandemic, some people in elderly care homes were not receiving visits on a regular basis. With limited mobility for the elderly and with limited resources for the staff, it is hard for the residents to keep in touch with life before elderly care homes e.g. shop for groceries, taking walks or visiting a coffee shop.
Secondary target group
Another issue connecting to the challenge is that before the pandemic a lot of Swedish municipalities and regions had summer jobs in elderly care homes. A consequence of the ban on visits was that these summer jobs were canceled and a lot of youths were left without an income over the summer.
1. Survey with elderly care workers:
I did not want to approach the target group directly since everyone wasn’t vaccinated yet. Therefore I created a survey with elderly care workers who work with our elderly every day. I wanted to understand their work situation, what issues they see with the elders, and what they would like to change for the elder's benefit. My survey had over 160 answers and this is what I learned.
Q1
“Do you feel that you can spend as much as you would like with every person?”
81.7% answered “No”
Q2
“If you had more time, what would you like to spend it on?”
When reading through all the answers I could see a pattern that they would like to give them more social interactions, spend more individual time with the elders, and engage them in more activities. I also understood that they are on a strict schedule which makes it hard for them to fulfill more than the basic nursing needs where elders social needs get left behind.
Quotes from the elderly care workers:
Q3
“How do you think the elders have been affected during the pandemic?”
They were able to choose several options. This is the five most common answers:
2. How does involuntarily loneliness affect people?
From an evolutionary perspective, being part of the community has had a strong survival benefit and we have developed strong mechanisms to avoid loneliness. Anxiety associated with involuntary loneliness is a warning signal to get us back to the pack. If you are away from the pack for too long, your body will experience intensive stress over a long period of time. The stress hormones can result in high blood pressure and inflammation in your body which can lead to heart attacks, stroke, and dementia. The highest risk of loneliness is when your life partner passed away, which many elderly have experienced.
What I learned:
I want to focus on:
The elder's social needs.
Bring them back to a community.
Make sure they have someone that has time to sit down to talk and listen.
Problem statement:
Elderly need to feel part of a community and have someone in their life that have time to socialize and listen in order to have better health, feel less lonely, and be less isolated.
How might we…
fill elders social needs and engage our elders digitally to decrease loneliness and feeling of isolation?
Experiment 1:
Teaching my grandmother how to use an iPhone
Before the test, I had turned off the password to enter the phone and made the text bigger. I also created a background image with text and arrows to support her during the tests. I gave her tasks to complete without explaining how to do them. I wanted to see how much she could figure out herself without any information.
Falsifiable hypothesis:
All people over 70 can learn how to use a smartphone by only learning the basics.
I know I’m right if she can:
Make/answer calls
Send/receive texts
Make/answer video calls
within one week.
Meet my grandmother Karin
Age: 92
Housing: Alone in her house
Assistance: Elderly care workers visit her for 10 minutes every day.
Tech skills: She does not own a computer, smartphone and has never been interacting online.
Results:
My hypothesis was proven false. She was not able to complete the tasks I gave her without my help. I decided to scratch this idea and bring my learnings to the next experiment.
Pains
Hard to understand how to interact with the screen.
Pushed the screen like a physical button which leads to no reaction from the screen.
Too small keys on the keyboard.
Hard to understand how to navigate in the iPhone.
She accidentally opened apps or swiped to another screen.
Gains
The social interactions.
Video calls - be able to see the one she talked to created a sense of meeting the person.
Be able to live stream the Sunday Service at her local church that she haven’t been able to visit in years. Reunion with her community.
Be able to receive photos.
Learnings:
I want to bring with me the value the online social interactions gave her. I believe it can invite elders to a bigger part of people's life. To teach someone with low tech experience might be investing too much time with a low return back.
Experiment 2:
Let my grandmother use a computer without knowing how to use a computer
I connected my old computer to the software Team Viewer which lets you control another computer remotely. To get an internet connection I shared the internet from the iPhone from the earlier experiment. With a phone call, she will describe what she needs help with and I will try to complete the task for her.
Hypothesis:
If someone helps the elder to control the device remotely then elders can benefit from the digital solutions without any tech skills.
Falsifiable hypothesis:
If someone helps the elder to control their device remotely then elders can still not benefit from the digital solutions without any tech skills.
I know I’m right if she can:
be social online without needing to learn any tech skills.
Results:
My falsifiable hypothesis is proven false, which means that my initial hypothesis is proved right. With a phone call, I could enter her computer and create a video call from her computer. I was also able to put on the live stream of the Sunday service from her local church, but this time, from the other side of the city.
Pains
The computer is too heavy for her to lift and move around. There is also an iPhone connected to the computer with a cord.
The computer is on the second floor and she did not always have the energy to walk up the stairs.
Gains
I can help her without being there physically.
She enjoys the video calls and can now have them with help from others.
She can interact with more people and get a larger insight into their life on e.g. by using Facebook.
Learnings:
For my solution, I want to bring all my insights and learnings:
If you don't have any earlier experience with digital solutions, it will take a lot of time and effort to learn how to use the device.
Elders without tech skills can still be active online and take part in social interactions if they can get help from someone else.
Elders have become more lonely since the pandemic. They might have been lonely even before the pandemic.
Elderly care workers don't have enough time to spend on the elderly's social needs.
Loneliness is a threat to people's health.
Guldkanten
I call my solution “Guldkanten” because it’s supposed to give that extra in their life.
Guldkanten is a service where youths remotely help elders to interact digitally to fulfill their social needs.
Key functions:
Video calls.
Community - Group calls with both youths and elders where a topic is discussed between the generations.
Scheduled individual conversations between the youths and elderly.
Help to navigate in the digital space.
The youths have two roles:
1.
They will have scheduled video calls with the purpose to exchange experiences through generations and fulfill a social need where the elders feel that someone has time to listen.
There will also be scheduled group calls with other elderly and youth to discuss a topic between the generations but also to have fun like playing games, storytelling, and quizzes.
2.
They will be stand-by support and ready to help when it's needed. It can be to start a video call with a family member or turn on an episode of their favorite tv-show
Navigation:
Since I understood that it could be hard to use the screen I wanted to create another option. Therefore elders will also be able to navigate on the device themselves by the color-coded buttons on the keyboard if they don’t know how to use the screen.
Easy to answer
Easy to end call
Goal:
Reduce the feeling of loneliness and isolation for elders.
That elderly can be more included in people’s life.
Give purpose and income to youths.
Next Steps:
User-test my prototype and make design changes from my learnings.
Have more in-depth interviews to be able to make a prototype for the youths and family side of the service.
Make sure that the prototype will work from four angles: The elders, youths, elderly care workers, and families.
Learnings & Reflections
Work with hypotheses, falsifiable hypotheses, and experimentation in order to prove or disprove my assumptions. I think it’s a fast and playful way to learn and move forward.
The mindset that failure is a way to learn. Fail fast to learn fast
Be more comfortable in not always knowing the next step. Be able to change your plan if you learn something new.