Wrinkle-Free

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Link to our Conference Poster: Here
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1. Introduction

As the ageing continues around the world, the population of elderly people is steadily increasing. Now we live in a world where many people like to share their interest and passions, but it is difficult for the elderly. Because social network has failed to connect them in a meaningful way, the problem with most social networks for elder people is: the new technology is a big challenge for them, and it is difficult to meet people with shared interests online and have real conversations with them. It is a good problem space for us to make a change for them, elder people have a lot of advantage compare to other people: They are more experienced in specific area, they also have lots of free time, but we tend to overlook and we are wasting their talent and experience, because we don't know how to use it in the right place. By utilising information technology, we can build an online interactive platform to make the most of knowledge and experience from elderly people. By using elder people’s potential to share their experience and skill to other people, we can help them maintaining regular contact with the outside world in order to stay happy and healthy. We also need to think about cognitive challenges, means of supporting naturalistic social interaction and emotional needs.

2. Concept

A large amount of elderly people are socially isolated for they feel difficult to contact with their relatives, friends and medical first aid. Thus they require a platform that helps them develop hobbies, maintain and enhance their social networks. Our concept would be creating a web based application for elderly where user able to post and share their knowledge or experience regarding their interest and passion for others to view and learn. It has similar feature like blog post where they can post text, images or video online, but it will be less complex where elderly able to understand and make use of the feature easily. All the post will be categorised by tag, for example if they post some cooking recipe the tag will be under “cooking” section. Each post has a comment section for user to comment.

During the signup process, user can select their interest in the selection fields, they have a few default selection such as gardening, cooking, tailoring, and much more for user to choose. User also able to select multiple interests based on their preference. After successful login they will be navigated to the main page where it is consist of multiple post shared by other users. All the post were filtered and categorised according to user’s field of interest.

Users are also able to browse and search for their interest in a list after searching the hobby by keywords from the search engine. The information will be shown clearly and logically, such as listed by popularity or page view. And the web-based application also has an attractive social component. It has function of social technology like online chat room, where elderly can find and connect to other people that share their hobby or interest by joining or creating the social group with similar hobby and interest, so they can chat with each other and release their status. The feature of user interface will be simple, elegant, less complex and easier for aging population to use. In addition to that, this application also could give an option to elder users to use their voice to input(optional) as well as get the output through voice instead of vision.

One sentence statement: Create an application on smartphone(form of the solution) which is older user friendly(level of user support) for those socially isolated older people (identity of users) , via passion/hobbies, sharing images/videos/texts by users (activities to be supported).

2.1. Backgound

We conducted our background research through browsing and searching for literature and research article online related to our topic, such as how advancement of information technology impact on elderly, how many of older adults have enthusiastically adopted it to keep up with the times as well as their old acquaintances and younger family members, percentage of internet usage among older adults, how to utilise the advantage of social technology to benefits elderly people and much more. Below items are few main points we took from several research articles and websites with supportive statements.

1. Positive attitudes were most frequently related to how the technology supported activities, enhanced convenience, and contained useful features. Negative attitudes were most frequently associated with technology creating inconveniences, unhelpful features, as well as security and reliability concerns.
2. More than 32 million older people (55 years and older) have a computer at home as compared to 62 million people between 35 and 54 years, and the use of the internet among older people is increasing.
3. Computers and the Internet can also help older people access information about community services and resources.
4. Beneficial for older people who have mobility restrictions or lack of transportation.
5. Some 81% of older adults who use social networking sites say that they socialize with others (either in person, online, or over the telephone) on a daily or near-daily basis. Among older adults who go online but do not use social networking sites, that figure is 71%; and for those who are not online at all, it is 63%.
6. According to the Pew Research Center, Internet use among those 65 and older grew 150 percent between 2009 and 2011, the largest growth in a demographic group. Furthermore, their 2012 study showed that of those that go online, 71 percent do so daily and 34 percent use social media. The elderly use these tools to bridge the geographic gap between them and their loved ones far away and as a way to re-connect with friends from a far off time. Studies show that the internet has become an important portal for reducing isolation, loneliness and other depressive symptoms.
7. A large element of Internet security risks for older people is their personal information.
8. The biggest single risk is money. Internet banking and shopping have a huge range of advantages – you can browse through as many products as you could ask for without having to drive to a supermarket or wade through crowds of enthusiastic shoppers.
9. The American Association of Retired Persons has reported that seniors who keep up to date with the internet can produce a positive impact on key areas of life, including: Personal Fulfillment, Health Preservation and Social Connectedness.
10. According to the United States Census Bureau, there are more than 6.7 million seniors aged 65 or older who are currently working, a number that is expected to increase to 11.1 million by the year 2018.
11. Researchers from Michigan State University have reported that elderly individuals who spend occasional time online can drastically reduce symptoms of depression, just another example of the vast benefits of new-age technology.
12. Using email and social networking platforms are a great way to easily stay in touch with those who are the closest to you, and all it takes to speak with someone face to face is a computer, camera and internet access.
13. Different people have widely different views on the definition of this term, which is one of the main reasons technological improvement often misses the mark when it comes to a certain demographic.
14. First of all, elderly most often like to retain some measure of independence. By using a walking cane, they appear old and crippled while a mobile phone makes it easy to check up on them, making some feel restricted. (How to make sure our product to be free for them will be one of the point).
15. The senior citizens don’t “get it”. They do not see the value of the technology presented. Why should they learn to type an email if they can just as well write a letter? Why should they take a mobile phone with them when they go out, since they’re perfectly capable of finding their way back home on their own?
16. Some elderly want to make use of technology, but fail when it comes down to it. This is most often the case with high-tech applications as the learning curve is regrettably a lot higher in these cases. Contrary to popular belief, this seems to be less of an issue if enough motivation is present. (Make sure the product we develop are easy for them to use and we need to teach them and let them to learn in a way to sure they are understand how to use our product and not getting any trouble).
17. People say that there are some reasons why elderly people are not familiar with technology such as mobile. Jane Mussared, council on the Ageing SA chief executive, said that the percentage of elderly people who use technology is still lower than other age groups because the cost of technology and lack of access to training programs are barriers. In addition, Chen Robert (2017) said they no longer need to learn new things to survive because they just occasionally update their knowledge and still be ok.
18. Many people say that it’s a good idea to involve target audiences in the early stage of the project to get clear and specific requirements from users. Czaja, S. (2012) stated that there are guidelines and examples of the design process but the elderly group has various aspects of users. He said elderly people have to be involved in whole process of systems and applications.

References

1. TL, M. (2010 Nov 1). Computer human behavior . Older Adults Talk Technology: Technology Usage and Attitudes, 26(6):1710-1721.
2. J, S. (2009). Human Computer Interaction. Information Technology and Older Adults, 18-29.
3. Smith, A. (2014, April 3). Older Adults and Technology Use. Retrieved from Pew Research Center: http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/04/03/older-adults-and-technology-use/
4. 5 AGE DEFYING BENEFITS OF SENIOR FRIENDSHIPS. (2017, July 15). Retrieved from Palm Lake Care: http://www.palmlakecare.com.au/our-stories/5-age-defying-benefits-senior-friendships
5. Kamiel, A. (2016, 07 03). A Hot Trend: The Internet, Social Media & The Elderly. Retrieved from The Blog: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anita-kamiel-rn-mps/older-people-social-media_b_9191178.html
6. Czaja, S., & Sharit, J. (2012). Designing Training and Instructional Programs for Older Adults. CRC Press.
7. Czaja, S. J., & Lee, C. C. (2007). The impact of aging on access to technology. Universal Access in the Information Society, 5(4), 341.
8. Waldhuter, L. (2017, February 4). Elderly use of social media and technology on the rise. Retrieved October 01, 2017, from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-04/elderly-use-of-social-media-and-technology-on-the-rise/8240508
9. Chen, R. (n.d.). Why Old People Have a Hard Time Learning New Things. Retrieved October 2, 2017, from http://www.embracepossibility.com/blog/why-old-people-have-a-hard-time-learning-new-things/
10. Acma.gov.au. (2016). Digital lives of older Australians | ACMA. [online] Available at: https://www.acma.gov.au/theACMA/engage-blogs/engage-blogs/Research-snapshots/Digital-lives-of-older-Australians [Accessed 4 Oct. 2017].
11. L'Vanderelst, K. (2011). The elderly are eager to use technology that will facilitate their lives. [online] The elderly are eager to use technology that will facilitate their lives. Available at: https://enerexxo.wordpress.com/ [Accessed 4 Oct. 2017].
12. CapTel. (2014). The benefits of technology usage for seniors. [online] Available at: http://www.captel.com/news/senior-living-and-independence/benefits-technology-usage-seniors/ [Accessed 4 Oct. 2017].
13. Gerber, R. and Perry, T. (2017). 9 security tips to protect your website from hackers. [online] Creative Bloq. Available at: http://www.creativebloq.com/web-design/website-security-tips-protect-your-site-7122853 [Accessed 4 Oct. 2017].
14. Ingram, A. and Stone, D. (2014). Internet security for the elderly|My Ageing Parent. [online] Myageingparent.com. Available at: https://myageingparent.com/technology/communication/internet-security-elderly/ [Accessed 4 Oct. 2017].

2.2. Audience

Elderly people who are socially isolated and wants to share their experience wisdom of life, develop their hobbies and learning some knowledge. Advantage of elderly: they have experience for some specific skill, and has lots of free time.

Persona

1. Virginia Moore is 81 years old and her hobbies are shopping, travelling, reading and listening to stories. In daily life, Virginia likes to stay active and engaged with her surroundings. Virginia enjoys chatting with her friends and having random talks with other people. She always helps new residents get familiar with their surroundings. She has more troubles remembering than before, but she still keeps studying. She is proud of her education and her positive attitude of studying.
2. Jasmine is 77 years old (born in 1940) and lives in Townsville. She has two daughters and three grandchildren. Her husband died 6 months ago because of skin cancer. She’s felt depressed after the death so one of her daughter lives with her now. She’s hurt knee joints and always carried a cane since 2007. She’s participated in a local volunteering club for teaching English to migrants since 2002.Uses a mobile only for calling and texting. Spends time for watching quiz shows at home. Exercises twice a week in the swimming pool.

3. Team

Student Name	Student Number	Course Code	Skills	Roles and responsibilities
Yau Ga Sheng	44462938	DECO7350	HTML, CSS, Java, Python, SQL Database Adobe Photoshop	Front-end Back-end Development team
Chenwu Han	44174633	DECO7350	HTML, CSS, Python Adobe Softwares	UX Designer Development team
Weiguang Hou	43442522	DECO3500	HTML, CSS, Python Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator	UX Designer Development team
Jemin Yoo	44260497	DECO7350	HTML, CSS, C#, Java, Oracle DB, MySQL Adobe Illustrator	Front-end UI Designer Documentation team
Kin San Poon	43848928	DECO3500	HTML, CSS, Java, PHP, Python, Database Adobe Illustrator	Front-end Back-end Documentation team

We have five people in our team with different kinds of develop skill, we will separate our project in different part and make sure all members in our team have equal amount of work to work on during the project development. For our team, Ga sheng and Adrian will be in charge of front-end and back-end, Stanley and Chen will be UX designer and Jemin for front end and UI design. For working as a team, we are respect to team members and make sure our have a chance to explore their idea and thinking for decision making, during the decision making for some important task or design, we will let all the members in our group to speak and see what they think. If ⅗ people in our group have same idea, we will follow the idea that we wrote. If we cannot make the decision, we may ask for a tutor or professor help. If one of the team members doesn’t work well in our team, we may run a meeting to discuss with him, to make sure why he will do something on this way, and can we can solve this problem. In our team communication and respect is very important. We make sure all people have their chance to talk and explore idea.

4. Communications

Normally our group will meeting online out of the class time by using some of the online platform. We will run a meeting for tracking the work done one time per week. And For our team communication, we are using the following platform, Slack, Google Drive, Trello board, Github, Facebook messenger. Facebook messenger is normally use for daily conversation between our group members out of class time, for remind people to work on the job, due day for report and etc. Slack also used as a platform to communicate between team member, and we can check the updated news that post by DECO 3500/7350 staffs and also contact them for help during the semester. We will upload all the material and job on Google drive for sharing to all our teammate, it is easy for all teammate to update and fix the document on the same time, for non-coding staff, for coding staff, we are using the Github repository, to upload and put all our coding thing during this semester. Trello board is used to organize and collaborate team works. For remind and marking our work by step. If one of our teammate didn’t respond to a message for long time, we will try to contact him by calling his phone, if still does not respond, we may contact DECO 3500/7350 staffs for following action.

1. Google Drive. We will upload all the materials and task on google drive for sharing to all our teammate, since it’s easy for team members to update and fix the document at the same time for non-coding stuff.
2. Slack is used as a platform to communicate between team member.
3. Trello is used to organize and collaborate team works.
4. Github is used as a repository and version control system to upload and put all our coding thing during this semester.
5. Facebook messenger is used for daily conversation between our group members out of class time, for reminding people to work on the task, due date for reports and much more.
6. And Trello board is used to organize and collaborate team works, or reminding and marking our work by step.
7. If a team member didn't respond to a message, we would reach him directly. If we still cannot contact him, we will report this action to the DECO 3500/7350 staffs.

5. Plan

5.1. Key Deliverables

No.	Name	Week	Due Date
1	Pitch proposal	Week 06	01 Sep 17
2	Requirement Definition	Week 07	05 Sep 17
3	Design Report	Week 07	09 Sep 17
4	Low-Fidelity Prototype	Week 08	13 Sep 17
5	UI Layout & Codes	Week 09	30 Sep 17
6	User Test Report	Week 10	04 Oct 17
7	Interactive Prototype	Week 12	18 Oct 17
8	Final Prototype with Conference Poster & Promotional website	Week 13	25 Oct 17

5.2. Project Schedule

Phase	Activities	Deliverables	People	Start Date	Finish Date
Research	Fix the idea & concept	Pitch proposal	ALL	23 Aug 17	25 Aug 17
Research	Conduct research	N/A	ALL	25 Aug 17	31 Aug 17
Research	Gather data	N/A	ALL	25 Aug 17	31 Aug 17
Research	Define requirements	Requirement Definition	ALL	01 Sep 17	05 Sep 17
Design	Screen Layout	Design Report	ALL	06 Sep 17	09 Sep 17
Design	Database	Design Report	ALL	06 Sep 17	09 Sep 17
Design	System Architecture	Design Report	ALL	06 Sep 17	09 Sep 17
Design	Week 8 Stand-up	Low-Fidelity Prototype	ALL	10 Sep 17	13 Sep 17
Development	UI Design (Detail)	UI Design	ALL	16 Sep 17	23 Sep 17
Research	Questionnaire	User feedback	Adrian	02 Oct 17	03 Oct 17
Research	Addtional research on topic	N/A	Jemin Adrian Chenwu	02 Oct 17	03 Oct 17
Development	Week 10 Stand-ups	Paper Prototype & Additional research	ALL	02 Oct 17	04 Oct 17
Research	Requirement	N/A	Jemin Adrian	05 Oct 17	06 Oct 17
Development	Conference Poster	N/A	Jemin Adrian	15 Oct 17	18 Oct 17
Development	Web layout develop	N/A	Ga sheng Chenwu Weiguang	12 Oct 17	18 Oct 17
Test	Week 12 Stand-ups	Interactive Prototype & Poster for feedback	ALL	12 Oct 17	18 Oct 17
Development	Web function develop	N/A	Ga sheng Chenwu Weiguang	18 Oct 17	24 Oct 17
Development	Promotional Website	N/A	Ga sheng	19 Oct 17	24 Oct 17
Finalisation	Showcase	Conference Poster Promotional Website Final Product	ALL	25 Oct 17	25 Oct 17

5.3. The Testing Approach

Next week, we planned to conduct the user testing of paper prototype. Firstly, test cases will be developed to observe the users’ reactions. Other than that, designers will record each action of a user and the timeslot the user spend to accomplish the tasks. Lastly, data recorded will be analysed to determine the performance of users in completing the tasks in order to find out whether our paper prototype is well designed.

Testing Process: First of all, make sure everything is ready before participant arrives. For example, electronic prototype/paper prototype, questionnaire. In particular, do not let participants see the questionnaire until I hand it to them to fill out.

Materials for participant: Electronic prototype/Paper prototype, questionnaire. Materials for observing: Observation sheets, recording tools (e.g. pens, laptop, mobile etc.).

Introduce the concept to the participants and give them high-level idea of what they will be doing today. Then give the participants more detailed instructions about the task what they will do. In addition to that, tell them how long will give them to work on the task. Then see if there are any questions from the participants before getting start and answer these questions.

For example, when participant is ready, we will give them 10 minutes to finish the defined tasks by paper prototype and ask them to start on the task:

1. Search hobbies or passions by key words.
2. Add friend or groups with common purpose and hobbies.
3. Browse status and photo from friends.
4. Share statue and photos with friends.
Take video(optional) and take hand notes are two effective and efficient methods that will be used to observe and collect test data.

Observational sheet:

1. Take notes on what the participant say as they carry out the task.
2. Take notes where the participant got puzzled or feel confused.
3. If the participant goes a bit quiet, ask “what are you thinking now?” or “what are you working on now”. When time is up, say “great, we now have the information we need for that part of our session” or something like that.

Next we will ask the participant to fill in the questionnaire after they finish the test. And check over the responses make sure that all parts have been filled out. Finally, tell the participant that the session is at an end. Thank the participant for their time. Let participant know that they are free to go.

Example of questionnaire:

Age: Gender:

1. Have you ever used similar application before?
2. Do you know the targets of this application?
3. Are there any missing functions that you need?
4. Do you find any bugs when you use this application?
5. How you keep in touch with your friends/family?
6. How you share passions/hobbies with your friends/family?

The following questions use 1-5 scale (from strongly disagree to strongly agree) to valuate the answer.

1. Do you think the font of this application is big enough to see?
2. Do you think it is easy to find where to start the task?
3. Are you satisfy with this application?
4. Do you think it is easy to understand the layout and content of this application?
5. If no, where and why?

Moreover, other aspects of concept need to test:

1. The aspects which users don't feel good.
2. The interface metaphor is suitable for users.
3. Explore more functions that can be used in our application an easily accepted by users.

Evaluation Method: The feedback of participants is really useful for us to improve my design and concept. There are two effective and efficient methods for data collection and evaluation. Firstly, interviews could be helpful method for me to collect data and evaluate. Interviews are typical and can be conducted face to face that aim at gathering both facts and insights. Secondly, we also can ask further questions or do any activities in plan (paper prototype) which are useful for further data collection and evaluation. Other methods would be both quantitative and qualitative. Basically, the efficiency of completing an action by a user will be presented in varied way of representations. For example, an average, maximum and minimum value will be calculated. Moreover, visual representations will be provided as well, graphs will be developed to help designer and following researchers to have a better understanding of the user group and the prototype itself.

6. Tags

6.1. Key Concepts

• Collaboration Transparency (Multiple Single-user)
• WYSIWIS (What You See Is What I See)
• Technology
• Shared Information Space
• Awareness (Knowing who is around, what is happening, and who is talking with whom)

6.2. Keywords

• Aging
• Social & Mobile