Designing a Senior-Friendly Android UX: for My Grandma

Overview:

My grandma enjoys talking to her daughters, but they live far away from her and she lives with her sons. She prefers video calls, but she asks others to do it for her. In Bangladesh, the popular video calling app is called imo, but it’s too complex for her and she can’t read English. Her phone doesn’t support our local language either. Additionally, she struggles to see the battery level on her small smartphone. Because of all these difficulties, we all agreed that she shouldn’t use a smartphone. It bothered me that she had to ask for help just to stay in touch with her daughters.

Challenges

The user can’t read English

UI elements are too small

Poor eyesight

Apps need multiple inputs for a action

Imo doesn’t have widgets

Android UX is complex

Evaluating potential solutions

Using Google Assistants

Google Assistant can’t make video calls by imo, users also can’t speak English and the dictation system is complex for the user

Using widgets

Imo app does not have images based widgets and widgets can be easily moved

Accessibility settings

Although android have lots of accessibility settings but none fitted in my case

Creating a custom UX

As a UX designer, I can create a UX specifically tailored to her needs that requires minimal input for an action and doesn’t rely on the Android system UI at all.

Designing the solution

How it will work

I decided i will be using 3 different applications to make it work.

How it will look

I don’t want her to read at all so it’s an image-based UI, To differentiate between functions i decided to use a different shape.

Actual UI

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