Background
For my final UX/UI student project I decided to focus on the elderly population, more specifically the Israeli immigrants from the former Soviet Union who formed their own subculture. The elderly population is growing rapidly around the world due to increased life expectancy and their use of technology - yet many digital products are aimed at younger audiences, overlooking this demographic and their specific needs. The inspiration came from my conversations with my mother, as well as generally observing the older immigrant generation in everyday life. Talking to older people and their family members, some I know and some I don't, trying to understand their needs, reading between the lines and looking for a feasible solution has been an exciting and challenging task.
Older adults have challenges, however, immigrants face additional ones:
• They experience more isolation due to leaving friends and family in their country of origin
• Even though they immigrated many years ago, many still have a language barrier - both local (Hebrew) and English, making it difficult to find services and navigate on and offline
• They have low economic status compared to the local population
Research and
Insights
The methods I chose for my research were secondary research on the elderly and their usage of technology, as well as statistical data on the elderly immigrants in Israel, along with user interviews and a survey. It was also interesting to hear opinions from family members and people surrounding my target group, as they could give another perspective, for example: when asked directly about their social circle, my potential users attempted to appear strong and content, however people surrounding them could spot the problem more easily.
This research led me to insights in the following areas:
Social Circle
Immigrants have smaller families, elderly people see their children once in a few weeks, and many of them are divorced and live alone. They lack social contact but are not eager to meet new people since they value long-term, meaningful connections- as opposed to superficial or online ones.
Managing Daily Life
• Troubles with managing online, such as banking, paying bills, or scheduling appointments with doctors
• Financial difficulties
• Language barrier and trouble finding reliable and affordable services
• They don’t know their legal rights and are also afraid to be taken advantage of
Culture and Hobbies
They are intellectuals, enjoying a rich cultural life, literature, arts and movies, as well as concerts and exhibitions. They actively search for online lectures and courses. Due to Covid-19, there has been a significant decline in their social and cultural life.
Technology
The elderly population uses technology in a slightly different way, due to physical changes but also due to being less used to it. A digital product has to be practical and useful for them, otherwise, they will not engage with it. My target users mostly use social media for keeping in touch with family and friends, as well as the Russian nostalgic app called “Odnoklassniki”, which allows finding former classmates that are now spread around the world.
However they often face difficulties and when they do, they usually ask for help from family members.
Accessibility
I wanted to understand what is it that makes it more difficult for the elderly to use technology. It seems that it has to do with physical changes, such as reduction of vision and hearing, cognitive decline leading to short memory problems and motoric issues. On the other side, they have a better attention span than younger audiences and it’s easier for them to concentrate on long text. They will pay special attention and read the instructions before using a product.
All these lead to special needs when it comes to UX/UI design. Some of them are compliant with the A11Y standard, which addresses general accessibility, and some are additional ones:
Bigger fonts and strong color contrast, strong consistency and clear navigation, the explanation provided for each action, labeled icons (since the familiarity with their meaning should not be taken for granted), large buttons, minimalistic, functional design with one or two actions in each screen. Long text, however, is not a problem and in fact, is helpful.
I have attempted to consider all these points while designing my product.
Defining the
Problem
Concluding from the research, our users want to enjoy life and stay socially and culturally active, however, they have financial limitations and are reluctant to use technology to expand their social circle, so the question I have decided to focus on was, how might we help them plan their social activities without causing financial damage while helping enriching their social circle in an unobtrusive, indirect way?
The idea was to create a car-sharing app, open to everyone but accessible to the target audience and in their language. In addition to the insights above, the specific situation in Israel and among the immigrants led to this solution:
• The public transport in Israel is inactive during the weekend, leaving the people dependent on private transportation
• The Russian speaking community is quite conservative and many women don’t drive. Since many are divorced and live alone, they have no affordable transportation solution for the weekend
• The benefit would be an affordable solution, volunteer-based, practical and useful, that would also maybe, in its indirect way, get people together in a community
Wireframes (translated)
Prototype
After creating the high-fidelity prototype, I went back to rethinking the layout, wanting to create a different version, that would make a more minimalistic, compact approach with horizontal scrolling, however, more usability tests would be needed in order to check its efficiency and whether or not it’s preferable:
Takeaways
In conclusion, I have learned a lot about accessibility and its importance, and how it affects UX and UI decisions. I have also learned about the complexity of interviews and how information needs to be examined from different angles - and even then nothing is certain. That's why my next steps would be more usability testing, looking at the result and its usability, the clarity of the product and whether it's useful and really helpful to my target audience.