Product design, graphic design, illustration, and interaction design students all came together in order to help the charity with their logo, web design, and advertisement. The product design students were given the task of coming up with a way to help volunteers engage with the elderly and that's the area of work I focused on. I was very excited to be given the opportunity to work in another human-centered design project, especially with a charity that is doing such an incredible job during the pandemic. I worked with 4 other product design students and most of our innovation came from chatting about our own grandparents. I really enjoyed this method of working, it was compassionate, genuine, and rewarding.
Team : Gareth Byrne, Sinead Spring, Federico Tusacciu, Tadhg O'Connell and Ava White
Chatter Natter is a card game we designed for Volunteers and Members to play over the phone. One stack of cards has question starters and the other stack has random question endings.
Eg. Tell me a time when ... travel the world.
The stacks have been seperated in the box and have different colours in order for the volunteer to easily demonstrate how the game can work over the phone. The volunteer will pull a yellow card and the member will pull a blue card, and vice versa. Therefore creating a full sentence.
Process - Figuring out colour, font, illustrations etc
Process - Alignment and sizing
The Final Card Design
This game allows the volunteer to be able to communicate easier with the member, and learn more about them. For the elderly member these questions can trigger old memories or experiences which is a nice moment for them to escape from their repetitive routine. As well as this the volunteer can be asked a question too and share their own experiences creating a more genuine conversation and connection. Elderly people are without doubt the best storytellers so we wanted to create something that would allow them to share these tales more frequently. There would also be a possibility for grandchildren or families to purchase the game and be able to play it on the phone while in lock-down, again creating genuine conversation and encouraging connection in these lonely times.
