Zocial

Welcome to Zocial!
The Directory/Home Page
Your Profile
Your Messages
Chatting with Your Friend
Finding New Friends
Browsing Interest Groups
All of Our Frames!

Inspiration

According to the University of California San Francisco, over 40% of senior citizens regularly experience loneliness. In 2016, 32% of Canadians aged 65+ did not use the internet. Especially now with the COVID-19 pandemic, the sense of isolation and disconnect is growing amongst the senior citizen community. With technology advancing as fast as it, more and more senior citizens are also feeling “left behind”. Our project seeks to provide a solution to the disconnect between seniors and technology. Many seniors feel lonely and platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. can be challenging to use. That’s why we created Zocial: a social platforming app for seniors. We chose the name “Zocial” for a special reason. The letter “Z” is the least used letter in the English language. In a way, it can represent senior citizens and the disconnect and isolation that they experience. Our goal is to bring social opportunities to all the “Z’s” around the world!

What Zocial Does

Zocial has a friend making function called “Meet” where seniors can view profiles, which include interesting facts such as hobbies and interests, and check “yes” or “no” as to whether they would like to be friends with this person. They can also edit and tailor their own personal profiles. There are also interest groups that seniors can join based on many different topics and interests. Zocial also has a messaging platform where users can message the friends that they’ve matched with, as well as those from their interest groups. All of these functions were designed with the needs and desires of senior citizens in mind. The app’s interface consists of concise layouts, large buttons and text, contrasting colours, and more. With these design choices, we hope to optimize every user’s experience with Zocial!

How We Built It

We used Photoshop and Figma to design and create our platform. We wanted a simple and easy-to-use app that is best optimized for the needs of senior citizens.

We specifically designed the UI to cater to the physical needs of the older generation. Our buttons and font size are bigger and we chose a font that is easier for older people to read. Also, for example, we used drop shadows on certain objects to help users recognize that they are buttons. Additionally, our sign up page mimics the typeform format, so that every step of the sign up process is displayed individually, which aids in not overwhelming users who are not familiar with technology. In “Talk” there is an audio function that reads the message out loud for the user. There is also a popup that shows up every hour to remind users to take a break and give their eyes a rest. Furthermore, most pages link back to the home page and the short user flows ensure that the app is simple and easy to use.

Challenges We Ran Into

Our biggest challenge was finding out how to truly understand the struggles and needs of senior citizens because of the generational disconnect between us, the creators and our target market. We ended up doing as much research as we can so that we could best fit the design and usability of our platform to the needs of our target audience.

The other challenge we ran into was the lack of coding and app development experience on our team. However, through this project, we have learned a lot about the development that goes behind social platforms.

Accomplishments That We Are Proud Of

Our biggest accomplishment as a group was being able to design a UI/UX prototype within the limited time frame of the competition and our limited experience. We were able to follow online tutorials to familiarize ourselves with the Figma interface and researched various design principles. Specifically, we were able to learn what design principles allow for easy accessibility.

What We Learned

We learned a lot through the development of our project. This was our first time using Figma and while it was challenging at first, we learned how to use the platform for design and development.

What's Next

We hope to begin developing a prototype of the app and share it with our friends, family and other members of the community to begin the first stage of testing.