It is a bit cheesy if I started by saying "I have a dream". I do have one, and it is one where my grandmother lived long, happy and we have a beautiful farewell for her. In reality, she was bedbounded, her last words to me were "It really hurts", "I don't want to live anymore". Nobody told me about what death was supposed to be like, and I was certainly not prepared for the words that came out of my grandmother's mouth. Although she has passed away some 20 years ago, those words would haunt me from time to time. Often the thoughts of I should have done more, or the feeling of guilt and helpless when I have flash back to those memories. I have one grandmother from my mother's side left, she has dementia. My mother worries about her developing dementia, and as I have seen my grandmother deteriorates to the point of not even recognising my mother, I felt her fear, and dreamt a place where, we not only understand what it means to die, but also provide a safe place physically and mentally for the process of ageing, and eventually leaving behind our love ones.

So I started observing what small ways I can help make a difference, and I noticed my parents, seniors around me all struggle with the thing we use most to connect with each other. Smartphone.
You see, the smartphone main audience are the young and tech savvy. You know how I know? because the text are too small for someone like my mum, who has long sightedness to see the 14pt text under icons, and design patterns that are not familiar to them, like gear icons means settings, and 3 lines means menu. For us, it is as easy as identifying two pieces of bread with cheese and tomatoes in the middle and calling it a sandwich and you are supposed to eat it. But for them, they weren't trained, it isn't easy to remember, and with losing something we take for granted as good eye sight, they have quite a lot to adjust and adopt in a span of a few years. For most, these smartphone and apps are just a means to an end, and they would much rather just watch TV, or read a book, what they have been doing for most of their life. And so the challenge is, how can we make technology adopt to them, and not the other way around?

I have thought hard and long about what are the core things they do on a phone. Essentially it comes down to just a few things. Calling your family and friends to have a chat when you arent with them. Send them messages to stay connected when you aren't calling. And sharing their daily moments, or receiving message of love and care from their network. Sometimes it is to learn or to entertain, but most of the time, it is just like letters and landline phones. They are just tools, and you just use them for that, and that's it. Sure there are a lot more to smartphones than what they are doing, but primarily that's what they need it for, and that's the simplest thing I want to try to solve. Get technology to adopt to their patterns, and empower them to connect, to have agency and live with a bit less stress.

Current OS does not seem to be helping them. They would get lost, they can't see the icons probably, or they have forgotten what they looked like. Their vision isn't good, their hands aren't steady, and often it is just information overload and just leads to panic, and giving up. I wanted to make it simple and clear and easy. Even with failing eyesight, and cognitive issues like memories.

This was inspired by an app called Before launcher. It is supposed to help mininalise distraction, but the simplicity of the design inspired me to wrap the OS in a more friendlier way to help seniors just use the 3-4 apps on the phone. Here is my initial design.

it is quite rough, I haven't done much refining in the UI level. This is just to express the idea of having a home screen, which wraps over your existing phone OS, and you would open your phone with this home screen. The first screen on upper left corner on first row, you can see that's just default settings. But after choosing some simple things, the first screen in the lower left corner on row two would be a customised home screen with just 5 options. Call ken, message ken, message Saag, take photo, and open photo album. These suggestions are based on observing what seniors uses, what are their frequent actions, and simply making quick shortcuts for them right at their homepage, and not finding the app, then remembering which icon and the location of the action they want to take, and by then to do what they wanted to do. This is just quick and easy with literally a click of a button to do the things they do most frequently.