WePlay
WePlay, a WeChat nest-in app for the elderly who just retired to explore activities with friends based on their interests, aims to help people enjoy life after retirement, and, in the long term, benefit their cognitive ability.
Project Overview
The Problem
People in China usually retire at the age of 55-60, when they are still quite energetic, healthy, and passionate about exploring life. It can be a challenge for many of those to adjust to a new life mode, find ways to enjoy leisure time, or remain connected with others.
The Objective
WePlay is a mobile app that enables people who just retired to explore and participate in activities. Users can find activities happening in the city, get recommendations, and share them with friends. WePlay can also help them find common leisure time more easily to hang out together.
Role
Design Research, UX & UI Design, Visual Design
Project Research
01. Context Info
02. User Research
Key features
Interests & Contact preference
01. Context Info
People who recently retired find it challenging to adjust to a new life mode
According to the research from SEM Tsinghua university and Hong Kong University:
1, About 20 million people retire every year in China while 52% are not confident about their retired lives.
2, 68% want to get re-employment.
3, 71% find they lack social activities.
Lack of social activities may add to MCI
Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a condition in which someone has minor problems with cognition such as memory or thinking. In MCI these difficulties are worse than would normally be expected for a healthy person of their age.
MCI would be stimulated by negative social interaction frequency. According to an experiment of PubMed Central, 37.4% in 529 participants lacking social activities have developed MCI. It is proven that MCI is closely related to Alzheimer’s Disease and will be irreversible once it progresses to AD.
02. User Research
Key features
Based on research above, I decided to mainly focus on people in age group during 55-65 as main users, who are going to retire or have been retired within few years. They tend to have well health condition and has willing attending social activities. After interviewing several potential users about their traits and daily lifestyles, I segmented users into the following 2 categories :
1. The elderly who spend lots of time looking after their grandchildren
Following traditional Chinese culture, users tend to focus on their family after retirement such as moving and live with their children and take care of their daily life, etc.
They usually have full schedules based on their family members, they often feel troublesome to find out common leisure time for everyone to participate in activities together.
2. The elderly who would like to have more meaningful free time of their own
With the change of times and personal thoughts, more and more users focus on themselves after retirement.
They have time and energy, but lack of good ways to explore activities they’re interested in and meet new friends. They are often confused by information overload on the Internet and apps.
Interests & Contact preference
I also researched top 5 events of the elderly would like to spend their free time on as well as counted the frequency of the tools they communicate with friends.
Key
Findings
Based on the research above, I summarized the key findings for the recently-retired elderly people as shown here.
1, It’s challenging to find activities that interest them
Users are tired of browsing tons of various activities without aim.
2, It’s challenging to keep connected with friends
Users recede from their working social networks. They look for new friends with similar interests but they lack of good ways to do so.
3, WeChat is the main social media app for people 50-60
As one of the most popular social apps in China, WeChat plays a key role in users daily lives, especially for their social connection.
HMW
How might we enable the elders to explore activities they are interested in and build connections with people who share the same interests in an efficient way?
How might we nest WePlay in or interact with WeChat to help the elders use it more easily?
Define & Ideation
01. Competitor Analysis
Main design goals
03.Wireframes & User testings
Low-fidelity prototype
Iteration
02. Information Architecture
01. Competitor Analysis
To broaden my views, I tried to research on several competitors today. Based on the project’s ultimate goal, thus, I divided analogous products into two categories: 'Apps for cognitive impairment' and 'Social apps for middle-aged and elderly people' . After that, I summarized what WePlay needs to do.
Main Design
Goals
1,Enable users to find activities based on their interests & friends
Users could have more ways to find activities attracting them instead of aimlessly browsing.
2,Enable users to share activities and make plans with their friends
Users could get schedule right away instead of spending extra time asking each others’ schedule, especially when there are more participants.
3,Consider accessibility and compatibility with WeChat
Considering the app preference of users, WePlay could be embedded in WeChat to reduce their learning cost.
Based on the competitor analysis above, I summarized my 3 design goals:
02. Information Architecture
According to the project research, I defined 3 main functions and developed detailed functions from them. They are:
Hang out: Users could explore activities in various ways such as their interests and their friends. In addition, they can create their own activities and invite their friends to join.
Smart schedule: Users could quickly match each other’s schedules and manage as well. In this case, it would be easier for them to hang out together.
Messages: Users can communicate with others as well as share things such as activities and invitations.
03. Wireframes & User testings
Get prepared
Users get to know WePlay and select their interests for later use.
I created a wireframe and invited 4 users to do usability testing to made iterations on the whole user flow as well as the interfaces.
Discover
Users get recommendation of activities, and they can add more requirements for discovering.
Contact
Users can directly contact with organizers of activities and ask questions.
Attend
Users can attend activities or keep inviting friends and make schedule later.
Self-owned activities
Users can also create their own activities and invite their friends to join in.
Chat & view friends’ profile
Users can share and view various activities when chatting with friends, they can also see their profiles to find more activities.
Set daily events
Users input their daily events at first. After that, WePlay would consider them all when making schedule to help users manage time better.
Attend & get schedule
Select an activity, invite friends and get all schedules suitable for every participants.
User testings
Iteration 1: Make exploring simple & clear
Iteration 2: More fluent attending & schedule making
Iteration 3: More flexibility to create and share activities
Iteration 4: Clearer daily events & schedules
Final Delivery
01. Functions Display
02. High Fidelity Prototype
Activities discovering & managing
Schedules making and Settings
01.Functions Display
On-boarding
Quickly know about WePlay and select stuffs that users have interest.
Fitting Design Challenge 1 - Find suitable activities
Discover activities - Search
Fitting Design Challenge 1 - Find suitable activities
and Design Challenge 3 - Easy to operate & get.
Quickly filter and view activities based on users’ interests or other personal needs.
Consult activity organizers directly if they have questions.
Discover activities - By friends
Users could view their WeChat friends’ Like to explore more activities.
They can also know how popular an activity is among their social circle.
Fitting Design Challenge 1 - Find suitable activities
and Design Challenge 3 - Easy to operate & get
and Design Challenge 4 - Combined with WeChat.
Create activities
Users could create and share their own activities.
Invite friends to join in or save for now and edit later.
Fitting Design Challenge 2 - Make schedule easily,
and Design Challenge 4 - Combined with WeChat.
Smart schedule - My schedule
Make a daily schedule first for the later use of making schedule with friends.
It can serve as a reminder when there are no activities awaiting.
Fitting Design Challenge 2 - Make schedule easily,
and Design Challenge 3 - Easy to operate & get.
Smart schedule - Schedule maker
Add an activity and invite friends, then see all available time for every participant.
Users can directly see the results instead of viewing everyone’s timeline to find common leisure.
Fitting Design Challenge 2 - Make schedule easily,
and Design Challenge 3 - Easy to operate & get,
and Design Challenge 4 - Combined with WeChat.
Accept invitation
Attend activities with friends and get schedule with one click.
Auto-set reminder.
Fitting all Design Challenges.
02. High Fidelity Prototype
Activities discovering & managing
Schedules making and Settings
Where to improve
Solution for physical strength declining
Another key reason for users to gradually reduce their outings is the fear of accidents when they go out, such as falling, which will become more and more serious as they age.
The thing is, users tend to lack of physical strength when aging while there is no effective way to prevent these situations yet. In this case, it is also a issue that all other similar projects need to solve in the future.