Music offers a multitude of benefits for people of every age, particularly for the elderly population. It works as a therapy to increase memory function, relax the body, reduce muscle tension and boost productivity. Our idea is to create a music app especially for elders to help them record their music which can thus help them recover their speech and also overcome dementia by recalling music . Singing and recording music will allow self-expression by sharing that with their community, friends and family. The other users of the app could be the listeners who like old songs. For elders listening to music can relieve them from boredom. While listening to music , tapping foot or clapping with rhythm encourages movement. The other benefit that can be reaped is creating a large social network and recalling and sharing stories associated with the songs.Our idea to create app that help elders to record music,share stories related to the music and listen to others recordings and music despite their various impairments and also taking into consideration their abilities.
Many young people use their different kind of music APPs to share their favorite music or some art form, for example, iTunes, music box, Spotify and so on. They enjoy and share a wide variety of music, share their own lives. Young people learn and master new technology quickly and easily, they are keen to understand new things.
However, technology is accelerating at an extreme pace, and the seniors can't keep up. So finding the way to make aging people enjoy the technology is the first question for our group.
At the same time, we also consider the aging people have more life experience means more knowledge, practice, and experience to draw on. So based on this idea, we decided to design a simple, easy to use app for aging to use and share traditional music and operas with their own stories, photos, different topics, and emotions. Older people can also enjoy the convenience of science and technology, at the same time, this app would seek hints of music or art forms that could disappear as change continues.
Our target audience are the seniors with rich life experience at a wide age range around 60-100, happy to share music and their stories and experiences with young people and their peers. The target audience also could be keen on the inheritance and continuation of music.
The goal of this project is to develop a music, life, and memories sharing software for the elderly. This APP uses voice control function and simple use of the interface to facilitate the utilization of the elderly so that the aging people could feel the fun and convenience of the technology.Also, big title and big text are also considered when designing the application.Based on the observation in daily life,plenty of the seniors are sufferring presbyopia when they are getting older.
Emotional design is a term popularised by Don Norman to explain why "attractive things work better” to address the criticism of his previous book that he was advocating(Su Mi Dahlgaard Park,2015) .
All design is emotional, but by focusing on personal concern/values and meaning, designers intend to evoke targeted emotions by taking directed design decisions. We are not able to design the emotion in itself, therefore it is common practice to talk about 'design for emotion'. We create the context in which emotions are elicited.e but ugly' products.
In our interface design,we focus on emotion design,the reasons are the following:
- Nostalgic style
Our target group is aging people, they might have lots of experienced in their life.so the nostalgic style to resonate their conditions,mirroring aspects of memory.
- Usage habits
This product design mode of operation,as much as possible uses the functions/interface that aging people are familiar with.
- Target groups
According to our research, In the 18 months starting July 2008, when Apple updated the iOS to support native apps, and ending in January 2010, nearly 150,000 apps were released. That's around 275 apps per day. In so many massive amounts of mobile phone software, music software accounted for 40% of the number (live wire,2010). In this 40% of the software inside, most of the design groups are for young people. For example, iTunes, For you, Tidal, Spotify and so on. And for the elderly involved in the software is only has 1%. So our innovation is to target the group for the aging people.
- Sharing anything with music
This app is a music app, but also could share the anything you want with music. Such as photos, stories, a piece of voice messages or others.
- Voice control
Aging people are difficult to learn and accept new technology, so to make the elderly more convenient to use the software. We used the voice control when designing the software. So that the aging people in the utilization of the software when it is not necessary to type. This function is increasing user experience.
- Upload own song
The user could share any songs/operas on this app. At the same time, the user also could upload own songs and rearrange the songs with other users.
- Unique emoji function
Consider the poor, elderly eyesight; we add the emoji function. When the user clicks the different big emoji form, the app will provide the different music depending on options selected by users, at the same time, the phone vibrates during in every time selected emoji form by users.For example:
😊 pleasant music
😭 Sad music
🍃Nature sounds
- Mobile buzzes function
- The phone will autumnally vibrate following the music beats.
- If the user selected any options, the phone would vibrate to remind the user selected the options success.
- The speaker phone function Along with increased age, severe hearing loss among aged people exacerbates problems in their daily life. Therefore, we add a speakerphone function on the APP, so the user would easily hear the music.
When there's a sudden tech revolution, you have to unlearn what you've already learned, which takes more time than learning about something new from scratch. This phenomenon is especially true for people over 50 because around that age the brain starts to lose plasticity (the ability to form and change neural connections into new ones). Therefore, aging people slowly start losing touch with new technology. Missed many opportunities to meet new friends, sharing memories, get new information and life online, and enjoy the convenience and joy of technology. This app can make aging people to sharing their music, memories, and life to others. Let the elderly have their cyberspace to meet individuals with the same hobbies, or to pass on their favorite music to others.
| Name | Student Number | Course Code | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bhawna Soi | 44726382 | DECO7350 | Team Leader,Front End Developer,Back End Developer |
| Lu Cao | 45034097 | DECO7350 | Logistics Manager ,Designer |
| Jiayu Gao | 44460381 | DECO7350 | Content Designer |
| Xiaoxin Wang | 44091673 | DECO3500 | Content Designer |
| Reginald Ho | 44018157 | DECO3500 | Backend |
It is hard to decide who is the best suitable person to become the leader to lead the team due to everyone has their own personality and ability, we finally have decided Bhawna to undertake the position. Since she has the longest study life than rest of the teammates, we have decided to let her become the leader and manage the project. We believed it is the best decision and she will lead the team successfully.
For the logistics part, Lu will undertake these jobs. She will be responsible for manage a team meeting, to group up which time is comfort for everyone for a team meeting and in charge of book a room for meeting. However, we thought it is not necessary to provide transport because most of the activities will be held in the campus and we will only use out own computer or faculty’s computer to complete our work.
To fill the key rolls, we decide to let Reginald to do the backend role, Bhawna will in charge of front end, XiaoXin and Ariel will in responsible for thinking content part and Lu will design the product interface. When every huge decision need to be made, we will use vote to decide which decision we will choose and on one can argue the final result, we think this is the fairest method to make decision.
Whenever poor performance happens in the team, we will have a group meeting and review what is happening in our team, then we will decide how to improve and what should we do for a better team work. Nevertheless, to avoid these kinds of situation happen, we will encourage teammates to work and communicate with each other consistency, when teammate is in trouble for completing the work, we will give a hand to him/her and help her to pass through the plight. We believed that we will pass through every plight if we have good communication and attitude, we strictly prohibit to blame others no matter they did bad or not good enough to achieve the requirement. Bhawna will come out if there is conflict exist in our team, because she has the most experience in the society and she will know how to resolve the clash.
- Meetings are held during the contact weekly and additional meeting is considered if it is necessary.The additional meeting should be proved by every teammember and the time will be decided based on the available schedule of the whole team,ensuring everyone can attend the meeting.
- Every team member should need to report what they had done in the last week,what they are doing right now and what they are going to do in the weekly meeting during the contact session,making sure that the team project is on track.
- A at least 24-hours meeting notice should be given which involves meeting location,time and meeting contents.Hence,team members can prepare to the meeting.Every team member is required to attend the meeting except for reasonable reasons and a 24-hour notice should be given through Facebook group to the team members.
- If a team member seldom replies any Facebook messages or contribute to the team, a warming would be given to him/her at first.If continued failure to comply,the team would discuss with tutor about current situation and probably take further actions on Peer Assessments.
- Facebook message would be the primary instance communication channel for project notification and project management because every teammember has their Facebook account on their phone,ensuring all the newest updates of project can be known by every team member at the first time and nothing urgent is missed.In addition, every team member should give respond within 24 hours.
- Slack would be used as well,since it's not mobile and less convinience comparing with Facebook message.Because all the DECO2800 tutors are on slack which it is useful for the team to seek help from tutors and to solve problems,the Slack is considered as secondary communication channels.
- Google drive and Github would be used as support tool for sharing resources online and since it will have record for each one's contribution and the team can identify the current project easily from the records and adjust the workload.Also,Google drive and Github allowing multiple people working on the same document at the same time which can improve the team efficiency dramatically.
The default naming convention for all the files would be :TEAMNAME_XXX.Team members should use this format when creating or submitting the files to keep the consistency of work.
| Project Phase | Description | Key Deliverables | DeadLine |
|---|---|---|---|
| Research | Online Literature,Meeting elders in local community centre ,Questionnaire | Survey,interview results, data collected from online search | End of week 7 |
| Requirements | Interface Design,functional design | Drawings and Diagrams | End of Week 8 |
| Design | Low-fidelity Prototype, Testing,Evaluation | testing and evaluation results , recommended changes | End of Week 9 |
| Construction | Developing app | Interface | End of Week 10 |
Through reading related literature online, searching in the library and operating existing popular music applications on the smart phone, we will analyze the functions, interfaces, interactions and target crowds of these popular apps. Because the elderly generally has some perceived deficiencies or obstacles compared with young people, our job is to discover the shortcomings of current apps when focusing on elderly as well as the difficulties the elderly might have while listening to music (i.e. visual and auditory). Group of elders at community center will be approached and interviewed. Questionnaire will be used to collect more information.
As current music applications are lack of consideration of the use of elderly, this part aims to figure out key requirements in aspects of interface design, function definition, targeted assistance for weak perceptions etc. In terms of theory of human-computer interaction, this smart-phone app needs to have great utility, be effective and efficient and be easy to learn. Considering use experience and emotional design, it should be enjoyable and engaging for old people and not challenging for them. On the visceral level of reflections, the interface and interaction should be fascinating and have specific characteristics of old times.
As research result shows and requirements gathered, the design process should follow the needs and requirements above. We would design on paper as draft. The sequence of designing would obey ‘from the whole to the local’ and ‘from contour to detail’ principles. First of all, the overall style and sketches of the app would be decided, which include what main colors are and what conceptual model are used. Then distributing different functions into various pages to satisfy users’ needs. Next, we might design several special functions to make it more convenient for weak-ability elderly, for example, a sound amplifying system and replace typing by using human voice commands. Lastly, graphic design will focus on icons, symbols and images of interfaces.
The last process is to make high-fidelity prototype on phone’s screen by utilizing web tools like InVision. The sequence of construction is similar as the designing step, but the content is more accurate and detailed. For example, in vertical prototyping, the whole process of one function would be displayed logically, meanwhile the aesthetic effect would also be better. We will definitely have several times of iteration to improve the app based on using tests, self-reflection and tutorial feedback.
In research, the milestone is graphic representations which may include pie charts for research, and it would probably last for 3-4 days; The result of requirements may be personas, scenarios, storyboards or flow charts for concluding initial requirements. It would take nearly 1 week to be accomplished; The design step would possibly take 2 weeks and finally be in the form of paper prototype; The rest of project’s time would be taken for construction step and the final version of digital high-fidelity prototype.
- Equipment
- Computers are needed for early research, graphic design and structure construction. Smart phones are going to be used for utility tests and internal effect display. Equipment with camera or photographic functions would be utilized in the late period for observation, interview or other using tests. Except cameras, other device will be used in the whole process of this program.
- People required
- A group of elderly, no matter they like music or not, would possibly participate our utility tests. We may intend to find old groups in Brisbane City, welfare homes and even make our relatives as participants. This step would between the period of second and last iteration of prototyping work, and we would make some changes according to the feedback we received.
#musicForElders #mobile #HumanReactions #coordination #affect #Emotionaldesign #social #TechnologyForElders #aging
Su Mi Dahlgaard Park,2015 http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/10.4135/9781483346366
Lifewire,2010 https://www.lifewire.com/how-many-apps-in-app-store-2000252