The purpose of our project is to create a virtual community for seniors based on location, interests, and careers. After selecting a topic of interest, a voice chat-only link will pop up where a chat lead will be selected from volunteers. Users are randomly assigned to different chat rooms. They can also team up to make sure they are assigned to the same chat room. At the end of the chat, users will have the choice to add chat room members to their friends list. As a result, this tool should help combat the various health risks brought by isolation to the elderly and reduce their sense of loneliness.
We have been concerned about the situation of the elderly during the quarantine time, especially the ones living alone. Unlike many of the younger people, who can spend time and connect with friends on social media like Twitter and Houseparty, games like Animal Crossing and Jackbox in their free time, the entertainment and socialization activities for the elderly are limited. In addition, the literature provided in the Resources suggests that isolation impairs cognition functions. We hope there exists a website that our grand-parents can virtually hang out with others, taking into consideration that they are more comfortable with talking than typing, connecting with people with similar backgrounds (geographical, cultural, educational, etc.) than unrelated. These concerns motivated us to develop this website. We used Google Site for development, because its setup is simple to read and interact for the users. One of the major concern we had is the accessibility of our product for the users not proficient (or even not equipped with) internet usage, and we proposed that we can include a text feature for them to reach out to the chatroom assignment, and we can advertise through traditional media for publicity.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1SR3NSdAi8L9iC0t8bTgqfQB6GtYzecNRcq0vT7HLqHU/edit?usp=sharing
We did not use any data in our project.