Final project

Overview:
In this project we designed a product for the elderly to monitor their health. Since the elderly are more prone to health issues, especially heart attack and high blood pressure. The device will help them to monitor heart rate, blood pressure and also temperature in real time. The device can call for help automatically or the user can use it to call for help whenever they need. Data from the device will be recorded and sent to hospital/doctor's database for reference.
The device is supposed to be small, portable, light and super easy to use to be suitable for the targeted users which are the elderly.

well, we had a 55-page project report, so I won't repeat those points in the report here. Instead, I will give this post a personal touch by presenting my thoughts and experience when doing this project.

It's true that the elderly's needs are often overlooked, since the young seems to have more consuming power. However, as the society is growing older and people's life spans is increasing, the population of the elderly is also increasing. Therefore their needs are also important.
The most difficult problem that we encounter is the generation gap between us and this user group. This is because we are too young to understand their needs and may misinterpret them. For example: when thinking of the elderly, we tend to think that they would want something that is as simple as possible, and that's all. However, according to That's why user research is especially important for our project, but we have difficulties in finding users to do research. We just try to find old people in our own family and neighborhood, hence it's rather limited.

Another big problem for our project is that although we tried a lot, we cannot possibly 'produce' a good high fidelity prototype. A high fidelity prototype is very important, because it's when the users will really 'feel' the device, since the high fidelity prototype is supposed to closely resemble the real product. Hence, the reactions of users when interacting with our prototype may not be the 'real' reactions.

Via this project, again, I know the importance of user research. Not only at the prototype phase, but at ANY phase, from the beginning with finding targeted group, finding users' needs, to planning phase with deciding which features and functions to include... to final phase with testing the prototype... Yep, nothing should be presumed. If we presume anything from the start and then later realize that our presumption is not right, it would be painful =) Fortunately we wasn't in such a scary situation, but I had to admit that we was temped to create a fancy product right at the beginning (our initial idea was a game, then a new kind of TV that can be used to surf web haha)


Okay, just another random comment: I agree with Kayvern that MSN is extremely useful =)

Hope that some day I will see a product like the one that we design...