GrandConnect

GrandConnect connects children and senior citizens to create a community of empowerment and communication.

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Inspiration

Studies have shown that 43% of older adults feel lonely^1, and because of their loneliness they are at considerable risk of greater decline in both physical and mental health, including a higher risk of death. Due to this, we felt it was important to focus on building bridges between older people and other groups to be able to combat the consequences of loneliness through relationship building.

We wanted that the groups involved should be able to create a community that will be empowering for them all. Because of this we wanted to involve elementary school students in a space where they would be able to practice and show off their skills, and receive encouragement from people outside of the family and school. The development of social skills will also help their children in their academic growth.

Combining these two aspects into one solution was the driving force behind this creation.

What it does

GrandConnect was created to connect elementary school children and senior citizens in nursing homes to create a community of empowerment and communication. Teachers at elementary schools and activity coordinators at nursing homes will be able to sign up for an account, and then be matched to each other by a coordinator who receives the forms. This means that an elementary school class will have an assigned nursing home, and thus have “Class Grandparents”. After they have signed up and been approved, they will be able to sign in and the teacher/children will get access to a calendar to add their availability for video calls. The nursing home/seniors will have access to the calendar to see availability and schedule video calls based on that.

How we built it

The mockups were created in Figma. The website was built with html, css, bootstrap, and javascript.

Challenges we ran into

Trying to implement a communication based application without backend, which made us have to rethink certain design decisions made. We overcame the challenge by focusing on other ways to connect the two groups, and made the decision of using third-party solutions to help reach our goals.

Another challenge was the completion of a full application in 24 hours.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Building a fully functional front-end application in 24 hours.

The creation of a concept that would fill a real-world need for both the elderly as well as children, based on research and design guidelines.

What we learned

To create one solution that can fulfill the user needs of two very different groups.

We overall learned how to make good design choices based on UX design and research, as well as coding designs created in Figma.

We also learned how to implement Calendly in the application, and integrate Zoom in Calendly as a full solution.

What's next for GrandConnect

From a UX perspective, we would want to do usability studies with the target users which would influence future iterations. We would also like to develop the application further and implement video chat as well as scheduling functionality directly in the app.

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