Groot — An Ecosystem Design for Post Fall Emergency for Elderly People in India
Pooja Doshi, Sonira Mehta, Anna Abraham, Vidhi Furia, Shubham Som Gupta
Introduction
It’s no surprise that the older you get, wisdom and hardships follow suit. Unfortunately, we observed that the design fraternity in its gravitation towards technology seems to ignore the senior citizen community. It is with this interest a team of 5 interdisciplinary students set out to solve the problem of falling for our beloved ‘oldies’.
After all, they are expected to grow to 20% of the total population by 2050 at a growth rate that is faster than the rest of the population!
The Problem:
The problem of falls in old age is enormously costly and disruptive for the older individual, others, and society. It’s severity is likely to intensify as our population ages. We have all heard of numerous horror stories of some elderly individual that had fallen and severely injured themselves and somehow never heard of any solid preventative measures.
What are we solving for?
There is an increasing emphasis on promoting independent living today, especially when families are going nuclear. Having access to the nearest ambulance and post fall care helps guardians take care of their family remotely.
Understanding the Problem:
The next step was to go down to the grassroots to understand :
- What were everyday task related struggles of the elderly?
- Was falling one of their primary concerns?
- How did they cope with these struggles every day?
We visited Varista Day Care Center for the Elderly in Mumbai for a fun time of informal interviews, shadowing, & contextual enquiry. We interacted with the senior citizens, their caretakers, helpers and even the staff to get a holistic perspective of the problems.
We also figured that it was highly essential to understand our core space of research- The bathroom. For that we mapped an average floor area of a typical Indian bathroom space along with its fittings. This allowed us to understand probable hot spots which directly or indirectly might trigger the incidence of falling.
The result was a resounding confirmation that the fear of falling in fact was existent and often debilitating.
Here were our key Insights:
- “Old people are talked to, talked at, but not talked with.”
- Sense of pride and fear — both associated with the bathroom.
- With every fall, the quality of life reduces.
- Lying on the floor for a long time after falling is more common among the oldest.
- Falling is not a prerequisite for the fear of falling.
- No device/solution that tackles emotional & mental support.
- Various intervention points from the entire incidence of falling and till the time help arrived.
Personas & User Journey Map
The target audience that we are catering to are independently living, whose daughter/son lives close-by. Entrepreneurial Mrs. Kokila Mehta falls in the same category. She stays alone and she provides tiffin to the bachelors living nearby. She is a 68 year old lady who loves to listen to music during the day and enjoys her friends company at the park in the evening. The happiest time of the day for her is when her grandkids come home to spend some time with her. She usually likes to keep herself busy the whole day.
To effectively understand the day in life of our primary persona, we mapped her one day routine along with high risk points and the emotion graph. This gave us a deep understanding of the various stakeholders involved. It helped us realize the involvement of emotions while doing a certain task; which eventually played an important role in designing the final product.
Value Proposition Statement
Inspired by the plant root that is the center of the plant ecosystem, GROOT is the center of this ecosystem and dispenses relevant & timely information critical to the well being of the elderly person.
It’s the root for the safety of our Guardians, hence GROOT!
The entire system of Groot enables the old person to be provided with aid at the earliest without much hindrance.
Ideation
This is an interesting phase where the team gets on board and throws hundreds of ideas. None of the ideas are considered as bad. Each and every idea is weighed and thought upon to solve the problem. These ideas are then brought into Desirability, Viability and Feasibility Framework.
Product
When we were ideating on the form and feel of the product, one aspect that really stuck with us was that the product has to be minimalistic. Considering our target audience, it seemed to be a good direction. We wanted the design to be non-intrusive both in physical space and cognitive space. While studying the other product from various designers and brands in the same category, design language of products by Braun, Philips, Dyson, and mainly the CARAVAN really stuck out, which is the perfect amalgamation of modern design and best of 90’s
Groot is equipped with Ultra-wide band 4D radar sensors and audio processing algorithm. It has the capabilities to scan the whole room & analyze the change in the state of the person. It does not have any kind of camera inside, which violates personal privacy. Complementing this, it has Voice over Internet feature as a medium for a fallen person to communicate with the guardian directly with the inbuilt mic and speakers. As we wanted to keep minimal physical interaction, Groot has just one Physical button, for on/Off. Rest everything is set up and maintained by a mobile application.
There is a magnetic power socket, for easy installation. Snap in. Snap Out. Gone are the days of traditional 2 pin sockets. It the top and bottom of the product, we have given lights which are integrated in the product.
This is how Groot will look in bathroom space. It can be placed at a good height range of 4ft — 5ft. This is IP67 rated, that means it is dust and waterproof up to 1 meters for 30 min. As we all know that when we go from a dark environment to a light environment, our pupils open gradually. This can cause sudden blindness for a few seconds. To help with this problem, our guiding lights open gradually with you opening the door. So, each LED rated at 2 lumens each will provide enough illumination in the room for a person to see in the dark. Groot has inbuilt emergency rechargeable batteries, which will activate on power failure.
Prototype
We started with basic paper prototypes and low fidelity prototypes to quickly test our ideas. The idea behind quick prototypes was to fail fast . An important goal of the philosophy is to cut losses with testing and know if something isn’t working and quickly try something else.
- Here we realized that Groot needed a better way to identify between different senior citizens who might be registered under the same household.
- What were the procedures if the primary user is not able to reach the emergency spot?
- Lastly, what is the neighbors involvement?
Information architecture
Information architecture was created for both the app and the back end ambulance vertical.
What is the app all about?
Our app seamlessly connects to the Groot ecosystem and helps you save critical time. Its GPS live location tracking helps you book an ambulance near you in less than a minute. Moreover, it analyses fall based scenarios to give you the best possible solution!
Key decisions form the ideation, empathizing phase is as follows.
- Allowing a simple setup process considering the average age of the user. Which is above the age of 40.
- We made provisions to allow users to schedule telephonic assistance for filling the medical and responders cards.
- Black red and green were the primary colors used in the app. These high contrast colors helped the user understand the urgency of the situation.
Quick features of the app
- Live tracking
- SOS calls
- Chat with responders
- Connect to responders
- Medical card
- Responders card
Use Cases
Scenario 1 — Senior Citizen has had a fall and is unconscious
- Senior citizen is in the bathroom and has had a fall.
- Groot would detect the fall and ask the senior citizen if he is okay.
- There is no reply from the senior citizen.
- Senior citizen is critical and unconscious.
- Groot sends a message to ambulance.
- Ambulance service accepts the request based on the details of the patient via the health card.
- The ambulance and is on the way.
- The primary guardian is informed.
- The primary guardian can track other responders and the ambulance service with the live tracking feature.
- An OTP is provided for the guardians and the first responders.
- Live status update is provided to all responders
Scenario 2 — Senior Citizen has had a fall and is conscious
- Senior citizen is in the bathroom and has had a fall.
- Groot would detect the fall and ask the senior citizen if he is okay.
- There is a reply from the senior citizen and he confirms that he is hurt.
- Groot sends a S.O.S. call and message to the primary guardian.
- Groot asks the primary guardian if they need to call the ambulance. The guardian gets to decide further steps of action.
- The primary guardian could coordinate with other responders with the live tracking feature.
- Senior citizen’s health status update is provided at all times.
Scenario 3 — Senior citizen has had a fall but he is fine
- Senior is in the bathroom and has had a fall.
- Groot would detect the fall and ask the senior citizen if he is okay.
- There is a reply from the senior citizen and he confirms that he not hurt.
- A simple S.O.S. message is sent out to the senior citizen
Quick User Testing
- Our testing revealed that the users wanted multiple profile creation on the app. They wanted to use it for not only senior citizens but essentially also the other people who lived under the same roof.
- Senior citizens needed easy icons to understand the functioning’s of the app under a high stress zone.
- Reminders for updating the user cards at all time.
- Quick demo to understand what to expect from groot in a situation of emergency.
System Integration
The entire system of groot involves several stakeholders. From the old person to the next door neighbor, we found it important to include all immediate points of contact to keep the system full proof. That would allow minimum possibility of casualty hence providing maximum safety and aid to the old person in distress.
Below is the mechanism chart which demonstrates how the different stakeholders are connected via different modes of services.
To understand this entire system in depth and various stages, we also developed a service blueprint, which clearly demonstrates the various points of intervention by different stakeholders.
Conclusion
To aid the elderly and avail them of help at the earliest, Groot serves to be the one point solution. This basic approach can eventually be extended to other possible stakeholders, different use cases, and alternative scenarios. The future roadmap below, emphasizes those possible actions, that we as a team foresee for our baby Groot.
References
- The Economic Times. 2019. Share Of Population Over Age Of 60 In India Projected To Increase To 20% In 2050: UN. [online] Available at: <https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/share-of-population-over-age-of-60-in-india-projected-to-increase-to-20-in-2050-un/articleshow/68919318.cms?from=mdr>
