Story-Telling for Elderly
The Project was given the theme as “Design for Elderly”. The elderly generally suffer from different mental and physical constraints due to their old age, which are needed to be taken care off, while designing. Social life tends to become static due to nuclear family, dispersed working group, unwillingness to join new groups, lack of hobbies.
Brief
The relation between the grandparent and grandchild is considered to be the closest in the family. The communication gap tends to be minimum.The grandparent tends to share experiences and stories with the grandchild. This project aims to design an interactive system that helps elderly to communicate effectively through storytelling using digital media as an aid.
Research Analysis
The user study of a focus group of 15 people of ages between, 38-63 was analyzed, based on a questionnaire. The following conclusions were the main results from the study:-
- Majority of elders were conscious about their health
- Attachment towards family and family members was confessed,especially towards grandchildren.
- A longing for social interaction was shown
- Majority of elders lacked hobbies
Brainstorming and Concept Generation
Final Concept
Final product was a tool for supporting traditional storytelling via simple and intuitive interactions. The product has two components: colored cubes and circular base. The colored cubes are symbolic of different emotions which are the constituents of a story. The cubes are supposed to be placed one at a time on the middle part of the circular base, which detects the type of cube using RFID technology. The feedback is given by the protrusion in the middle, by glowing with the same color as the cube.
Prototyping
After drawing the inferences from literature study, user study, Brainstorming and Conceptualization. The emphasis was on prototyping, RFID technology was used for prototyping
