IC – Social Communication Tool for Seniors

This is the result of my degree work. IC is a social communication tool for seniors. It makes it easier to use video telephony, sms, mms, e-mail and social medias to stay in touch with family and friends.
According to research from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, 19% of people over 60 are depressed in Norway, mostly because of isolation and loneliness. As the number of seniors are growing, we need to work with new ways to help them stay independent to give them more joy in life and to reduce the stress on our health care.

“ How can the quality and availability of social distance communication be improved for the elderly?”

Contact with the users through interviews and observations has been the key point in this project. Their usage of products and social connections have been observed and the users have also been involved in workshops and mock-up testing to make sure the concept is shaped for the users surroundings and actual needs.

Contacts can easily be added by scanning e-mail addresses on the screens surface or talk to the intelligent voice recognition. Other data about the contacts is automatically gathered from social media sources. Pictures, drawings, poems or similar can easily be shared by scanning them on the screen while in conversation. The bi-directional screen also makes it possible to have real eye to eye contact.

This project has been chosen of The Nordic Council of Ministers to be a part of The Creative North
- an exhibition about Nordic Welfare Design in Shanghai 2010. It has also been featured at Yanko Design.