Overview
User-centered Intuitive Designs for Elders and Kids
Results
Challenge
Technology can offer many conveniences to seniors, however, it may also seem a little daunting. Smartwatches, in particular, offer many benefits to seniors, but seniors sometimes have lower self-confidence and higher anxiety when facing new technology. They offer many features that appeal to the elderly population, although there may be some initial challenges in learning how to use them. The company is eager to find solutions that could ease the frustration when new users first get on board with this new technology. In the meantime, smartwatches also provide a great way for parents to keep an eye on their children in a nonobstructive manner. While these smartwatches tend to be more primitive in terms of functionality, the functions included in these smartwatches should also be engineered to be useful in a kid’s lifestyle, such as being a lot more practical and playful.

Solutions
Cloud Interactive’s design team used an outstanding illustration design to make the smartwatch more pleasing to the target age groups, which indeed improved the willingness of using the smartwatch. In the beginning, to better understand the users, we invited users from different age groups to our office to be interviewed. We focused on seniors aged over 65 and kids from 6-12 years old. We then conducted a series of questions and interviewed them individually. Our UX designers also walked the users through the entire onboarding process of connecting the app and watch together, and collected their feedback afterwards.
In order to break the barrier for elders adopting new technology, our interface designs of both app and watch emphasized color contrast and larger font size to enhance readability, meanwhile it kept information simplified to motivate the elder users. Additionally, we made sure that the “Fall Detection” function is clear, with obvious buttons of “Help” and “Cancel,” which are straightforward enough for the elders to react intuitively and easily in an emergency situation.
For kids, our design team provides children-oriented sets of fun and energetic character designs, making the use of simple watches more playful. Moreover, we understand parents are using the app mostly to stay in touch with their kids. Our design team made sure the GPS tracking function is convenient to use and showed the tracking feature intuitively on the map.