EL.LO

Inspiration 💡

As we’re aging, we’re realizing how precious the time left that we have with our grandparents are. Sam and I are lucky enough to have all four, but Donald and Bryan only have their grandmothers. The problem that arose, was that since we are living further from them and can’t take care of them as often, how would we be better able to support our grandparents and other senior citizens without living right next to them. Daily tasks become harder with age, and in an ever-changing world like ours, even little things like finding the time to help your grandparents and teaching them how to send an email might be difficult and require an incredible amount of patience. Some quick stats are that 1 in 5 of the population in Canada are 65+. 93% of seniors also prefer to stay in their own homes after retirement, which increases the number of elderly citizens that are living on their own. So our question was: how do we better reach and help this group of the population, how do we make their lives more convenient? This led to the creation of EL.LO!

What it does 🔍

The name EL.LO was born from combining “elder” with “hel*lo*”, in a way that it’s a welcoming community for senior citizens on a technological front where we don’t really often see that. Seniors can use this app to connect with verified members of the community called Task Helpers that are able to provide their services. These services can range from cleaning, to cooking and shopping.

But specifically, how does the app work? The User, usually a senior citizen or a member of their family can select a task that they need help with, let’s say to change the lightbulb, and choose a Task Helper that can complete this task for them. The Task Helper, on their side, can set an hourly wage for each of the tasks, or set a general wage, which they are able to earn once a task is requested of them.

Our priorities in creating this app were the following. First and foremost, the security and privacy of our users. When people sign up to be Task Helpers, criminal and background checks will be required as well as two references, because they’ll be working with vulnerable individuals. Second is convenience, and when they request services, they’ll be able to see Task Helpers who are located nearby. Trust is one of our top priorities as well, and as mentioned before, because we are working with vulnerable individuals, we have a trust system in place that rewards and more often recommends Task Helpers that have high Trust levels. Last but not least, and we considered this quite a bit in our design for EL.LO, is simplicity. Seniors often have a difficult time navigating complicated UI designs and so our team simplified the design as much as possible, making the buttons and font bigger, using highly contrasting colours and only keeping the necessary items in our mockups. This way, it’s easy to navigate for seniors and we maintain an approachable front that doesn’t intimidate our main audience.

How we built it ⚙️

Expo, React Native, MongoDB, Express, Node.js. We also did a design prototype in Figma. (GitHub and Figma links down below!)

Challenges we ran into 🚧

Main challenge was time: we decided on an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and went straight for it. However, we only had previous experience with hackathons online and underestimated the time that we would be spending in-person at the events Hack the North offered. Connecting the front-end and back-end also gave us issues, but the mentors were very friendly and helpful.

Accomplishments that we're proud of ✔️

Building an app entirely with a language that all of us had no previous experience in! We were able to learn a lot and from each other, and thoroughly enjoyed all the 36 hours (especially the hours that we were able to get some sleep 👍 ). The login and sign up feature work on our app, as well as the fact that we got the frontend connected to backend. When we add a task from our app, it gets loaded into the backend correctly and because this took us more time than like we'd like to admit, we are very proud that it works!

What we learned 📚

How to work with React and React Native! None of our team knew how to work with React, but thanks to this project, we learnt a lot during the time that we had. We also learnt quite a lot about our body's reaction to caffeine and how it affected us differently in our sleep-deprived moments.

What's next for EL.LO 🔜

In the future, we can add a chat and call function, providing an easy way for seniors and Task Helpers to communicate on the platform. We can also scope out a way to link family and friends’ accounts so that they can help their elderly neighbours in a way that isn’t overly time-consuming. Another possibility would be to integrate professional services as well such as plumbing or wall painting, so that it’s a complete all in one app. And you never know, consider going international as well. Our team dreams big.