Probing into the service-system design of mobile-based applications in gated communities for senior citizens.
There has been an increasing rise in people looking for gated communities over the past few years. For they tend to provide a solution to these people as they offer a better lifestyle and also provide a sense of security. These communities are also adopting mobile based applications for security as they help in tracking visitors, staff management, child security, delivery and cab management, clubhouse management are to name a few.
Moreover, it is seen that the older people, who comprise a major section of the society are also an integral part of these gated communities. The reason being
1. With more nuclear families, the safety net of these older citizens when they are a part of a joint family seems to be disintegrating. Hence they are looking for independent living in a secure community.
2. Migration by young people to metros or foreign countries in seek for better opportunities has also left the older citizens to be a part of these communities.
This makes us think as to how the older citizens interact with these technologies?
If they do, how they do and if not, what stops them?
Are they able to use it for the purpose it is intended for?
Or are these applications really required?
Research Objective:
In this studio, we would like to study how the senior citizens interact with the service by probing into the service-system design of mobile based applications in gated communities.
Method :
We started with an exercise by doing an impact analysis of an article on rating the workers through these apps. On doing the analysis, we found out the following;
1.There is a huge difference when one rate a product on an e-commerce site and when one rate a human being.
2.Ratings also affect in a way, altering people’s perception towards the worker.
We did a competitor search to know what are the applications which are currently being used in the gated communities and how do they position themselves in the market.
We further tried to look into apartments which use Whats app groups as a medium for their community-related discussions. On going through the chat history of one of the apartments for last 3 months, we found that they are majorly using it for sharing the technician numbers, sending out defaulters list, tracking of any repair works, also as sharing and awareness platform.
We then saw, how different users interact with these mobile-based applications in the gated communities. So to begin with we interviewed the security personnel and then the residents using My gate application. We did a mapping to understand the same.
Then, we wanted to break down the cluster of residents and categorize them on the basis of their age and type.
This resulted in brainstorming to find out what could be the problems faced by senior citizens of such communities.
Interacting with few old age people one an elderly couple and the other a retired teacher, we found out the following
1. The couple were a smartphone user, but they were using it more for listening to music and the retired teacher was used her smartphone with ease using Whats App, Skype, YouTube.
2. The couple did not know about my gate application being used in the community but the teacher was using this application from the time it was introduced in their community.
3. The couple were keen to know about this application and how they could use it. On the other hand, the lady seems to be using features such as quick access for pre-approval for the guest, delivery partners.
After presenting our idea, we got feedback to not generalize the older citizens according to the technological usage and let that come from primary research. Also, to keep in mind that older citizens have varied needs according to there age, sex and interest.
This made us want to look and delve deeper into how senior citizens use these applications keeping in mind the above feedback.
Timeline
Expected output and outcome
As an outcome, we are expecting to map our finding and a do a journey map through a video.
Team : Falcon
Jyotirmayee Das
Harinie Ananth
