The CHI 2007 Student Design Competition problem centered on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by designing a service or system to encourage the use of public transportation (or other alternative means of transport). After iterating through a rigorous design process, we developed a system to be implemented at Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs) throughout the United States in an effort to encourage ride-sharing among residents in order to decrease their carbon emissions. We focused on senior citizens for two reasons – they are a growing segment of the population with driving habits that result in higher pollution, but they are also a population that is at risk of isolation and the mental and physical harm that can result from being isolated. Our system addressed both of these issues while leveraging the infrastructure and culture of CCRCs in addition to hiding the technology from the senior residents themselves. Please see our paper for a more in depth description of our process and concept.
Our design process was characterized by multiple iterations of user research, concept generation, and testing.
We developed numerous concepts to encourage elderly use of public transportation, however it became clear that the automobile was a quintessential sign of seniors’ independence. After conducting interviews with experts, deploying surveys nationwide, and engaging in ethnographic observations, we developed the Senior Travel Buddies ride sharing system. This system allowed us to positively affect the driving behavior of senior citizens, while simultaneously addressing their social and emotional needs. We initially designed paper prototypes and conducted usability tests with experts in their work environments and, based on this feedback, created a high-fidelity prototype that was sent to CCRC event coordinators across the country.
The Senior Travel Buddies concept is a ride sharing system in which seniors still retain mobility through automobiles, but instead of each senior taking their own car to the same destination, seniors share rides to the same event. CCRC administrators are the target users of this system, which they will use to manage trip schedules, define new trips residents are planning to take, and add other residents to the planned trips. Focusing on CCRC administrators as our target user group allows us to hide all technology involved in our concept from seniors, while still affecting their behavior. The information about trip availability would be communicated to the residents via schedules posted in common areas. Based on an on-going survey we have sent to CCRC administrators nationwide, all CCRCs have some system in place to communicate activities to residents and all of the locations currently post schedules and distribute fliers.
Download the Senior Travel Buddies System Flow Chart
Odom, W. , Jensen, S., and Li, M. (2007). Senior travel buddies: sustainable ride-sharing & socialization. In CHI '07 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (San Jose, CA, USA, April 28 - May 03, 2007). CHI '07. ACM, New York, NY, 2079-2084.
Top
