PhotoCaring
PhotoCaring
PhotoCaring is a concept design for an interactive surface that displays shared photographs belonging to residents of an elderly home. The photographs are displayed in a gallery format on a wall in one of the home’s common spaces where interacting with and sharing these personal photos will promote social well-being, nurture identity and will provide a sense of home for everyone in the building. Throughout the duration of this project we made visits to several elderly homes around Copenhagen.
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Background
PhotoCaring is based on the insights gained from our one week user research workshop for which we visited elderly homes throughout Copenhagen. PhotoCaring was designed to address the following three needs:
- A need for social interaction amongst the elderly that is based on common interests, experiences and personalities.
- A need to maintain personal identity.
- A need to create a sense of “home” in the building’s common spaces.
During the two week GUI course, the period that this project was produced, we made a subsequent visit to one of the elderly homes. We conducted more specific research around our design concepts and user testing with paper prototypes. Some of our findings included:
- PhotoCaring was our strongest concept in terms of level of interaction for elderly people
- Photos on different subjects proved to be a good conversation starter
- Anne discussed her dissatisfaction with paintings hanging on the walls throughout the building
- Anne showed us some outdated photos hanging on the hallway wall which contained people no longer living in the building
- Anne showed us her own apartment which contained a wall of photos with notes on the back. Anne flipped over her photos to read the notes so that she could tell us where the photos were from.
Final deliverables included a presentation in which we supported our concept with insights from our visits to elderly homes, an animation communicating how the interface works and a physical simulation in which we projected photos into picture frames on a wall.
Team members
Ashwin Rajan
Jacob Sikker Remin
Personal contribution
User research, concept development, paper prototyping, functional & visual interface designs, Flash animation