Nickname Call
App design
An application that uses voice technology to help older people who don't know how to type and only speak dialects to add phone contacts
Date： 2018.09 - 4weeks
Design： Independent
How did I start this project?
I have two grandmothers, one is 75 and the other is 68. When they use their mobile phones, there are some problems with adding contacts, finding contacts, making calls. Based on these scenarios, I hope to give a solusion to it.
The situation of using mobile phone in China
Based on the abilities, conditions and baisc analysis of the user, I conducted desk research and surveys of mobile phone usage of 27 elderly people aged 65 and above who only speak dialects.
HMW create an easy-to-used Contact for the elderly who use the smartphones and speak the dialect
Who’s the user?
I conducted further observations and interviews on 10 elderly people who used smartphones, and created persona to represent the problems faced by respondents.
What probelms do they have when they need to add or call contacts
Through the recording and visualization of the usage process, we can more fully understand the
operation,
feelings and mood of the user.
How to solve the problems?
The user can't add contacts, mainly because it's hard to input textual name on their mobile phones. So why not use any sounds input instead of traditional input(pinyin spelling, handwriting, Siri)?
Speaker recognition technology allows people to use any sounds（like voice name） input instead of textual name to add a contact, and when making a call, use the sound that has already been input to find and dial a contact phone number.
Concetual sketch
Solving the challenge 1: Add an extra way for user using what they call others to add a contact by themselves
Solving the challenge 2: Use nickname to call their contact is more natural because in real life, the
dialog between human is always started by a name.
For example, “Peter, how is going?”
Hi-fi interfaces
Calling contacts
This design base on existing phone call application, which could reduce the learning cost for users. In the Nickname call page, there are two main operations of the app. The first one is Calling contacts. Because this function is used more often, the button is placed in easier reach of the fingers.
Add contacts
Adding contacts is another major function of the app. In the flow of the task, by dividing the entire big task into smaller steps, the operations and information required for individual steps are simplified, which allows the user to focus on the content of the current step and prevents accidental touch.
