Inclusive Service Design for senior citizens in gated communities
As a part of service, system & infrastructure studio, we got an opportunity to explore how gated communities using My gate application function. We dig deeper to understand the system and its actors. We then got to know that senior citizens comprise a major part of these gated communities, and this led us to explore how do they engage with this service. Hence, our research objective was to find gaps which are currently present in the system and to provide ways to make the system more inclusive for senior citizens.
Understanding them through interviews made us realize that these people do occupy a wider section of society with each one having varied needs, interest, liking, etc. Hence categorizing them is not an option. While interviewing more such people in these communities, we came to an understanding that though there do exist, senior citizens who use a smartphone and also use my gate application with ease, there do exit citizens who are feature phone users and hence do not use these applications.
The reasons for this came out to be,
- They don’t really feel the need for a smartphone.
- Quite afraid of the complexity involved as the interface looks intimidating to them.
- They are afraid of committing mistakes.
This led us to create touch points through service design through which people using smartphones and feature phones can interact with the system.
Process
As an extension to the journey maps, we decided to see how senior citizens interact in a particular scenario when a visitor, a delivery partner or a technician comes in and what are their journeys when they are alone or with someone. We also extended what they do in case of an emergency. We then mapped their emotions against each such scenarios.
With this, we listed down their activities to see, what are their pain points and what could be the pain point for others.
With the commonalities of the occurrence of the phenomena, we identified three such scenarios which were experienced by most of them.
1. When someone is at the door and she is alone at home.
2. In case of an emergency when no one is at home to help.
3. As they are mostly alone, what can be done for community socializing?
Intervention
By inclusion we mean, some of the senior citizens, just because they aren’t able to use a smartphone are not being a part of the community and thereby excluded from the services which the community has to offer. In an effort to bridge this, we thought, as these people are mostly the feature phone users, how can we enable them onto the platform, without necessarily learning to use a smartphone.
The question arises — through phone or through other options? As a phone would mean they always will have to keep it.
Exploration:We also compared the features which My gate offers and how people not using smartphones are not able to avail the services like that of emergency or notifications which are put on the notice board, etc.
We further explored few digital products and also items which they wear or are bound to keep it with themselves , for example, a chain, spectacles, or a stick. We finalized on using a chain and a locket to explore the functionality.
Then the question arises what if we integrate?
Journey
On boarding process:
The process starts with admin registering all the residents using a feature phone with their numbers and their language preference on to the Mygate application. Ones the number is registered, my gate issues a locket to the registered mobile numbers.Admin then conducts a session to get them to familiarize with the feature and how to use the locket.
The video describes the scenarios where they can use this feature and in a way bring them on the platform and enable them to be a part of the society.
Outcome
Analysis using IAMAST— we tried to analyze the new service by putting it into the IAMAST framework to get a better sense of its working.
With the newly incorporated service, we changed the earlier stakeholder map to incorporate the new changes.
The system map helped us understand the types of interactions which occur between different stakeholders.
The service design blueprint helped us see the effect of introducing a new service on the system.
As an extension to the proposed service, we are thinking of including of all senior citizens on the platform, may it be smartphone users or feature phone users by ;
1.Organizing Health camps to conduct regular health check-up at a community level.
2.Organizing Interest groups activities which will help facilitate bonding over some discussions.
3.Conducting sessions with the security guard to provide first aid, CPR at the time of emergency as they are easily accessible to the residents in case of an emergency.
4.Enhance well being in senior citizens -physical and mental health well being by doing exercise and conducting yoga sessions.
5.Staying meaningfully active by working and contributing it to the society by taking music lessons or tutoring classes.
6.Strengthening social network through gathering and interactions.
7.Support groups to help assist people in need or seeking advice.
Limitations
1.We did not consider people with disability in the scope of this project.
2.Also, senior citizens are relatively a wider category with all of them having different needs, interest liking etc and to consider the requirement of each one of them is difficult.
3. Systems functioning is dynamic in nature in a real-life scenario and also the interests and the behavior of various stakeholders involved are varying in nature.
4. Integrating services is challenging.
Conclusion
In this project, we have made an effort to build a system which brings all the citizens of the community in the same platform to avail the services it has to offer. Though to what extent the service and the system will function really depends on the proper functioning of all the dependencies, behavior and the interest of various stakeholders involved.
To know more about the process : First phase , Second phase
Our studio Space for this project:
Team Falcon
Jyotirmayee Das
Harinie Ananth
