Theme: Social
Please access the application on a mobile device or use chrome developer tools to set to a mobile view
Inspiration
In the present COVID-19 situation, during which people are isolated in their homes, it was easy to forget a certain: the elderly, more so than ever, are perhaps the most isolated. Unlike children and teenagers who had to go to school and adults who were busy with work, the elderly had most of the ways to pass their free time taken away from them, such as going to community centres or just going to the nearest coffee shop.
One of the ways many elderly individuals choose to keep their minds active is to interact with close friends through the use of messaging platforms, which they have grown to be quite well-acquainted with due to the rise of technology and its accessibility. However, some may still face challenges with using these platforms, a very common problem being that they are unable to type well using the tiny keys on the keyboard. As such, it is an observable trend that the elderly utilise the voice recording function to simply send an audio message, rather than have to type. As such, we were inspired to create a new user interface that is not only more elderly-friendly, but specifically catered to those who favour the recording function over the keyboard.
What it does
Forgoing the keyboard altogether, we simplify Telegram’s user interface such that more space on the phone screen can be used for displaying bigger text, as well as allow for larger elements such as buttons. This application will retrieve the user’s messages from their Telegram account and display it on the enhanced user interface with larger and simpler elements to make it easier for the elderly to use. The elderly will be able to record and send their messages back to their contacts or group chats.
How we built it
We used GramJS’s Javascript implementation for consuming the Telegram client API endpoints. For the frontend, we created a React web app and added the Web Speech API’s SpeechSynthesis interface for our text-to-speech function for incoming messages. Our components were sourced from Ant Design’s open source UI library or made from scratch.
Challenges we ran into
The main challenge we faced was a lack of time, and several add-on functions had yet to be implemented because of this. Another significant challenge was that there was a bug in the original Telegram API that prevented us from integrating our frontend with it, which was something that took precious amounts of time to sort out with the developers of Telegram, though fortunately, they were kind enough to fix it in time.
Accomplishments we’re proud of
We were able to develop a whole new user interface that was pleasant for the elderly to use based on design principles. We have a few detailed mockups of the ideal end product, given enough time to develop it to completion:
In addition, we were able to incorporate text-to-speech functions for incoming messages, something that would greatly assist elderly individuals who face challenges in reading from a screen even with an enhanced display.
What we learnt
Being able to work closely as a group as we strive to deliver our product was extremely rewarding. We learnt both backend and frontend skills, as well as a healthy amount of debugging experiences. Our team also gained invaluable insights as we discussed how to deliver a smooth and personalized consumer experience for seniors, and were even able to get in touch with the developers of a well-established software such as Telegram to fix bugs that affected the implementation of our project.
What’s next
The application can be deployed on other popular messaging platforms, such as Whatsapp and Wechat if possible, and more customised functions specific to each platform can be built e.g. updating status in Whatsapp. Other common features such as being able to send images, emoji and stickers can be explored.
In addition, we drafted a potential further socialisation feature, which will enable the elderly to indicate their interests amongst a list of common hobbies for the elderly (gardening, cooking etc.) and find relevant public group chats to take part in and connect with like-minded individuals, as shown in the sketchups below
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.