Embark - Digital Calendar for the Elderly

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For this module (Elements of UI/UX Design), we were tasked with designing a digital calendar aimed at senior citizens. We studied and followed the Five Planes of User Experience as described in the book Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett.

The app intends to take care of mundane and repetitive activities so that the elderly don't have to remember them. This way, they can be encouraged to be more active and go out more often.

Plane 1 – Strategy

We created various user personas within the the target demographic, and finally settled on one specific persona called a Median persona. Considering the lack of technical proficiency of our target users, we posited a secondary persona - a helper of the primary persona and someone more technically proficient than him/her. The secondary persona will be able to create a linked account on the app, and use it to the same extent as the primary.

Plane 2 – Scope

Plane 3 – Structure

Plane 4 – Skeleton

We tested the skeleton with our batchmates to ensure there are no basic usability snags. We used the paper prototyping method and iterated with the feedback we received.

Plane 5 – Surface

For the surface, we stuck with an aesthetic directly influenced by Material Design, with components from the Material Design component library. The high fidelity prototype was created in Justinmind Prototyper.

Considering the time constraints, we focused only on one task - booking a taxi for the primary persona's doctor appointment. The taxi is booked without exiting Embark or showing the interface of the taxi booking app. This demonstrates that the user may view pending tasks on Embark and complete them in one tap.

Use the high fidelity prototype here.