Solution
Our Solution
We are making a website that will connect elderly people through cooking.
Specific Information About Solution
The solution itself will be a collection of recipes on a digital cookbook. In order to make this as user friendly as possible, we have decided to add as many tutorials and explanations as we can. The goal is that anyone will be able to use the site. Each recipie will have a section on how easy it is to complete the dish, given any medical conditions. In order to connect as many people as possible, the site will also offer the opportunity to add a comment to the dish. That way, users can interact with each other in order to discuss the recipe. The recipes themselves will be broken into groups, such as desserts, or even southern. The goal is to create as much of a sense of community and belonging as possible.
Existing Soloutions and How We Chose Ours
Many solutions to elderly loneliness involve talking to other people, doing creative things, and having a hobby. We wanted to fuse these ideas together in order to, hopefully, create something that helps even more. After carefully considering the potential options, we settled on cooking. Many elderly practice this already, as its simple and can be done indoors. We figured that a senior friendly cooking site could be the next big soloution.
Some of our research led us to differnt orginizations that specialize in helping this kind of problem. We decided to collect information on how they operated and use it to make our solution.
Here are some of the orginizations that we researched:
offers the option for seniors 55 and older to partner with volenteers for simple tasks.
Allows seniors to talk to volunteers and build friendships with them. The volunteers are encouraged to help the seniors with simple tasks as well.
One of the most influential voices on aging. Wise And Healthy Aging allows seniors to talk to medically trained professionals. This non-profit also holds events for seniors to engage with each other.
Pricing and Methods of Collecting Data
Pricing
Due to the fact that most of the work will be done online, very little of the website will cost money. In fact, the only thing that actually will involve money will be the recipes themselves. In the building portion of the project, we needed to make some of the recipes, for filming and photography purposes. Therefore, assuming that the average cost of recipe is about 20 dollars and that we only need to make a demo of what the site could look like, this will cost around 40-60 dollars in total.
Data collection
Our goal for this project is to have the elderly feel less isolated and more connected with those around them. Therefore, quantitative data, while technically being the best option, will be difficult to create, but we plan to present the people that we test this project with a survey. We will ask them on a scale of 1-10, how much they feel that this would help them connect with their community more than they already have. As well as, on a scale 1-10 how easy and usable this is. Once we have the data that we need, the rest is just putting it in a graph.
Our Solution Video
My Movie 4.movData
Our data clearly highlights the effectivness of our prototype. As it recived extremely positive responses from people, regarding how helpful it would be for connecting to the community. Our data shows that we had very strong sucess in the helpfulness for connecting the community, but did recieve less when it comes to usability. The lowest the helpfulness for connection dropped to was a nine while for usability it was an eight. This displays an area for growth, as we need to make the site even more user friendly. The next steps for solving this barrier would be a safe, easy way for elderly people to meet up in person and connect over food. As well as a way for elderly people to enjoy other activities, outside of cooking.