Stanford Health ++
ERA (Elder Relationship Assistant) 2020
Awarded the Best Stanford Emergency Medicine International Power in Hands Solution
Introduction:
This project was started at the health hackathon hosted by Stanford University, Health++ 2019. This event hosted over 450 engineers, designers, business experts, and healthcare professionals from all over the world to ideate, design, and build in the space of healthcare.
My team tackled the issue of social isolation in older women from low and middle-income countries, a project pitched by Stanford Emergency Medicine International (SEMI). We designed and presented the app ERA (Elder Relationship Assistant), a phone-based solution to increase social connectedness. We were awarded the SEMI Power in Hands Solution Award and the opportunity to continue working on our idea through a prize of $1,000.
Role:
User Research
Visual Design
User Experience Design
Duration:
October 2019 - April 2020
Tools:
Figma - High Fidelity Prototyping
Stanford Health ++
What it does:
ERA (Elder Relationship Assistant) is an app to increase the social connectedness for older women in low and middle-income countries in order to improve physical and mental well-being.
Inspiration:
We came together as a team to work on solving social isolation for older women in LMIC's. We had met through the Fung Fellowship for Technology and Wellness at Berkeley and had previously been exposed to the idea of social isolation and loneliness which was something we felt strongly diving into when we approached the challenge.
How we built it:
We designed a prototype of the user interface with ERA using the app-prototyping platform Justinmind.
Challenges we ran into:
The biggest challenge was working around making the platform adaptable to people with low-tech phones to ensure we were reaching the biggest range of older women in LMIC's.
Accomplishments that we're proud of:
We are really proud of our prototype for ERA, we were able to condense and simplify our ideas into an easy-to-use app that could be made adaptable to different platforms.
What we learned:
As a team making sure that we communicated well with each other really made a difference in how we shared our ideas and the efficiency in being able to prioritize what we needed to get focus on. From the challenge, we learned a lot more about how social isolation for older women in LMIC's was impacting their health and the perspectives to addressing this problem.
What's next for ERA:
We are hoping to take the next step in refining and developing ERA by seeking the right mentorship and through the appropriate research to make the most effective use of this app in resolving social isolation.
Check it out here.