Persona III - Eilleen Stone

Name: Eileen Stone
Age: 99

Eileen Stone is a very opinionated, and optimistic person,although there have been setbacks in her life she has soldiered on which is probably one of the reasons she has reached the grand old age of 99. Eileen is disabled due to chronic arthritis and a fall about 15 years ago which left her needing both legs to be amputated.

Family

Eileen feels very luck as she is a mother of 3 children (with deceased husband Dick), grandmother of 6 children, and a great-grandmother of 2 children, she really enjoys it when her great-grandchildren visit.

Occupation

Retired at the age of 60 having spent most of her life working as an Author of childrens books. One of her biggest achievement in her working life was to get a contract from Bloomsbury at the age of 34. She wrote many successful novels under her publisher Bloomsbury.

Demographic Attributes

A retirement/nursing house in Devon.

Health

She is disabled thus is in a wheelchair people in the nursing/retirement home help her with day to day tasks. She also has chronic arthritis for which medication is taken. She is generally in good health for her age though.

Household and Leisure Activities

Due to her reliance on other people Eileen isn't as active as she would like to be but, her hobbies include knitting which she tends to do everyday, the clothing she knits tend to be given to family or to various charities. Eileen also likes her puzzles which she has done ever since she was a young girl with her grandmother. Although she is a retired author Eileen still find time to write (both letters and short story's for her great grandchildren).
Eileen loves going to church as she is a very religous lady and like to see friends who also go to the church. Eileen also enjoys and watching her favourite TV shows.

Goals, Fears, and Aspirations

As Eileen is retired now her goals in life have mainly already been achieved but, Eileen would like to continue to keep as active as she possible can and make the most out of the rest of her life by seeing her family. Eileen biggest fear of all is to have to be completely reliant on carers at the moment she has got used to the fact she needs help but if she was fully dependent on other people she would lose the will to live. Eileen aspires to continue her life and try to get out of the nursing home a bit more if possible.

Computer Skills, Knowledge, and Abilities

In Eileen words Technology and her go together like "chalk and cheese". She lose patience with a lot of new technology and find it hard to remember even the simpilist of modern technologies. Although Eileen has be taught how to use a VCR and now fully understands how to use it. Eileen doesn't care much about technology and doesn't have a lot of motivation to try and understand.

A Day in the Life of Eileen

As Eileen relies on carers to give her a helping hand she wakes up at a similar time everyday at 6:30 am. At about 9:30 am she goes to the living room where most of her friends in the home are having a morning coffee. Today the topic of conversion is pensions as some of them are going out to the local shops to withdraw money and have a browse of other shops. Eileen is going to the shops with some of the staff on the Ring & Ride service. After shopping Eileen watches some TV in the lounge including her favourite program Diagnostic Murder . Eileen will then have diner around 5:30 - 6 pm where on some Sundays her family join her and Eileen cooks a roast diner, which is her favourite. Eileen continues to watch programs on TV or listen to music until around 10 pm where she gets help to go to bed.

Persona II

NAME:

Raven Miur

AGE:

79

ORIGIN:

Jamaica, Kingston

CURRENT LOCATION:

North Yorkshire, Northallerton

HISTORY:

Lost her husband in 1957 in "JAMAICA'S WORST TRAIN CRASH". In 1960 she emergrated to UK - just before the restrictions were placed in 1962 - needed a new start

PERSONALITY:

Spends most her time cooking and watching day time tv and is consequently overweight. Only gets out to go to church , amazingly keeping her faith in the church after the loss of her husband. Raven is very patient with people but is also very lonely with only her two children visiting on sundays.

SKILLS:

Her english isn't great but she hasn't had much opportunity to improve it. Mrs Miur
is a very impressive cook, cooking for her two children and 3 granchildren every sunday(her best day of the week). Singing is one love that has never faded, she used to sing in a choir in Jamaica

ENVIRONMENT:

With having sold her business in Jamaica she has just enough to finish paying the mortgage but will need to improve finances within the next two years if she is able to carry on supporting herself.

GOALS:

Raven would like something new to fill her days, making the days pass quicker. Improving her english is also very important if she is to socialise. A dream of hers is to one day go home to Jamaica to visit husbands grave but its an expensive trip that she cannot afford. Raven would also like to carry on with her choir singing as nothing says praise the Lord like a hymn.

Problem Definition

Having looked at problems and opportunities for the elderly, we produced a series of ideas for potential products. We've chosen to go with the 'Barcode Scanner Food Intake Device', as a health and well being device, and this is the formal product definition.

Many of the elderly live alone and cook their own meals but may not be fulfilling their dietary requirements. Some of those may be at additional risk from diabetes or osteoporosis and it would be useful if they could somehow monitor their intake of food and identify deficiencies. The device will need to process input, information about food consumption, and produce output of some form for both the user and anyone else with interest - doctors or peers.

As a secondary problem, we believe some people have a monotonous diet and the device could suggest new meals and foods for the user - to both combat tedium and to provide dietary requirements.

Persona I

Name
Arthur Rawlings

Age
78

Family
Has been married to his wife, Joan, for 56 years. They have one son named John who moved to America over 7 years ago and has since got Samantha. John and Samantha have since had a son of their own called Luke who is now 4 years old.

Job
Arthur used to own "Rawling & Son Printing", which was originally started by his father. He has since sold his company and has now been retired for over 15 years.

Environment
Arthur and Joan live in Longdon, Gloustershire. They have a medium size house which was built in the 1930s and originally belonged to his father before he passed away. Their house is surrounded by large amounts of farmland and only has access by small country roads.

General Health
Arthur has generally good health and mobility but suffers from high blood pressure. He also requires glasses for reading and has an hearing aid as he has lost much of his ability to hear without it.

Interests
One of Arthur's most enjoyed leisure activities is fishing and he often does so about twice a week. Arthur also enjoys walking with his wife around the local area which is also beneficial for his blood pressure.

Goals
Arthur now hopes to enjoy the quite life with his wife. He also hopes to see his son and grandson more often.

Behaviour Patterns
Arthur has worked most of his life and now enjoys taking life slowly and enjoying it. He has a very strong sense of family which he has inherited from his father and would do anything for them.

View on Technology
Arthur perfers to have things simple which he believes technology rarely is. He is still confused by the microwave and can't understand why people use technology to complicate matters.

A Day in Arthur's Life
Arthur wakes up and joins his wife for breakfast. After breakfast he leaves to go fishing while his wife goes food shopping. Arthur returns home for lunch and he and his wife have a sandwich after which they go for an afternoon walk. On their walk they stop at their local pub for a drink and then return home. Arthur and Joan have a dinner in front of the tv watching Countdown. They clean up then continue to watch TV, mostly soaps and dramas which Joan enjoys. They usually go to bed at 10pm but tonight stay up till 11pm as their son John calls them from America.

Design Idea V

Barcode Scanner Food Intake Device

As almost all foods have barcodes on them, this device would allow the user to scan the barcode of the food they are going and would tell them how much of their daily intake it would allow for. As the day progresses it would allow the user to know what is lacking from their diet and could also possibly make suggestions as to what else the user could eat to better balance their diet. The product could store all the information so that doctors would be able to download the information at check ups to ensure their patients are eating healthly.

Design Idea IV

Many eldery people are very familiar with the use and controls of their tv, however, are less familiar with new technology such as home computers and the internet. My idea is to combine the familiarity of the tv with the new technology of the internet. Due to the complexity of the internet the tv will only allow limited use, however, if a specific domain is set up for such an idea, we can open the internet up to a new generation, or more accurately the older generations.

Each community will have independant sites, whereby the tv conrol with be used to either select a topic or navigate to the next screen. Within the sites the user is able to view what is happening within the community, local news and any articles that may be relevant. This will enable the older generations to find out about societies and other opportunities to venture out of their homes as well as any announcements that they would otherwise miss.

Another aspect of the technology would allow for the more advanced users to logon to the internet via their computer and personalise the sites - choosing what information they want to see more of -adding it to their homepage.

Although rather simple this could bring the advantages younger generations have from the internet to tv screens, pushing new technologies to the boundaries to incorporate a greater proportion of society.

Design Idea III

Interactive Soap

A large number of elderly people enjoying watching soaps which are shown on television. The idea is to make software which the elderly could easily use to interact with a soap type program. The soap would progress and at set intervals the person watching it could chose what would happen next or what decision someone in the program would make.

Design Idea II

Remote Security System

It is clear to see that these days people are living longer meaning that there are larger numbers of elderly people around today. Having brainstormed some "needs" of the elderly, security and their mobility became an area where a product could be developed. This product has a lot of scope it could be used to control many different items in the house from turning on the kettle to answering the door (through some kind of video feed and special lock).The device to control all of the different functions should be an easy to use PDA system or something similar. The assumption that will be made when designing this product is that the elderly doesn't really understand or have the patience to deal will complex technology, so the GUI will have to be very basic and allow them to access different function easily and quickly. The actual hardware must be easy to use and durable.