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How might we design healthy, inclusive digital spaces that enable individuals and communities to thrive?


Gamifying Digital Literacy for Older Adults to Increase Autonomy

by Rhea Gupta

Design Researcher and Strategist

Submission Date
November 01, 2022


CO-CONTRIBUTORS

Ayoola White, Tanushree Padath, Andan Eddy, Trina Nurse


OVERVIEW

Ask Mabel is a playful SMS based subscription service that sends bite-sized lessons to older adults who wish to learn basics about digital technology. 

As per a study done by Pew Research Center, it was discovered that close to 2 out of 3 older adults feel low to no confidence when using technology. Keeping this in mind, Ask Mabel is designed to provide a practice arena, a play space for older adults to get familiar with technology and build their confidence.

Mabel’s lessons are structured as concise, digestible bits of information followed by quizzes and rewards to reinforce learning. These lessons are intended to build autonomy and digital confidence among older adults so they can participate and thrive in our increasingly digital world. 

The solution is designed for low-income seniors, who, instead of downloading and dealing with the complexities of an app, will simply receive a text message, 3 times a week at their preferred time, to practice basic skills through a lesson link provided. The lesson will be then followed by a short game or quiz to help them practice what they learnt.

To be as accessible as possible to the linguistically diverse population of New York City, our home-base, we have the eventual goal of offering Ask Mabel in 10 languages other than English and Spanish. We also intend to implement Ask Mabel in other cities upon a successful pilot in New York City.

Ask Mabel was started by 5 determined fellows as a part of this year's fellowship topiced Digital Equity at the Blue Ridge Labs @ Robin Hood Foundation, NY, and has since undertaken extensive community centred and participatory design practices at its core.


PURPOSE

We created Ask Mabel with the principle that, by building foundational technological skills, seniors can gain confidence to navigate any basic tech issue they encounter on a day-to-day basis, without always having to rely on external support.

Using community-centred design principles to engage with multiple older adults about their digital needs, we found out there is a lack of self-guided courses designed to meet the needs of older adults, which prevents them from attaining autonomy in their digital experiences.

Low digital literacy blocks older adults from accessing essential services, government benefits, e-health, and beyond. The goal of Ask Mabel is to build self-confidence in older adults so they can eventually become digitally autonomous.

One of the main culprits for low literacy is cultural ageism. We often think of older adults using technology with the support of someone younger. Digital tools designed for older adults, such as the Granpad, often contain lesser functionality and appear to be patronising to older adults, further isolating them from existing technology that others around them use. Moreover, media rhetorics tend to memeify, or make fun of real struggles that they often have, such as hearing loss and social isolation. Due to these reasons, seniors often don’t see themselves as capable of learning technology, and often face an emotional barrier when trying to take initiative with using technology.

 

QUESTIONS

Washington, DC

United States of America

Older adults are coming into the Digital Workplace prepared, thanks to Mabel!

Today, low confidence with tech is one of the biggest barriers in tech adoption for older adults. Moreover, avenues for building confidence through trial and error are limited. Ask Mabel will not only instill our target audience with specific, tangible technological skills, but will also fortify their confidence so they can implement those skills. Through our participatory research interventions, we heard numerous seniors express shame about asking for help navigating digital services. We address this shame, through promoting autonomy, by sending lessons to seniors in the comfort of their own home and time. This will not only help them navigate social services online, but also increase skill sets that can connect them to economic opportunities. 

 

For older adults still in the workforce or looking to get back in—a population on the rise in the United States—regular practice with Ask Mabel will allow them to gain technological training that was unavailable earlier in their careers. As Ask Mabel grows, we intend for it to match users with relevant job openings based on their newly gained skills. Moreover, there is an expanding awareness at the federal, state and local level about the need for technology literacy among seniors, which would help support and amplify awareness as Ask Mabel grows. 

 

Further, older adults’ increased technological fluency will fortify communal connections, be it through social media, FaceTime with family, or religious services by zoom. To that end, we intend to combat social isolation by actively promoting online communities to adapt to the needs of older adults.

 

Lastly, recent neuroscience research hypothesizes computer games could promote cognitive benefits for older adults. Ask Mabel would be one of the avenues through which older adults can increase mental agility and provide resilience against cognitive decline.

Our current target audience is low-income older adults in the New York City area who are seeking to improve their digital literacy. 

  • Once developed, Ask Mabel would scale to older adults outside of this region. 

  • We would also scale by connecting our audience to economic opportunities near them based on their newly developed skills. 

  • Scale into a mobile app, in addition to the SMS text-based service, to create personalized learning experiences. 

  • As our product gains a positive reputation, we will have greater capacity to address older adults with high degrees of technophobia that prevents them from engaging with digital technology.

  • We want to leverage the practice of gray-labeling, so it can be used as a template at tech companies to onboard users with low digital literacy. 

  • We want to scale into active collaboration with technological literacy providers

Currently in action in New York City, looking at growing to other states
  1. Caretakers 

    Caretakers have shared their difficulty in supporting seniors' navigation of digital platforms, to the point where it is easier for them to do it on their behalf, instead of letting them develop autonomy. Ask Mabel will allow seniors to become independent and would alleviate some of the burden caretakers experience from having to provide technical support that is typically outside of their job descriptions. We hope to partner with caretaking agencies such as "Friendly Voices" who are currently looking for ways to engage their clients.

  2. Digital Navigator and Tech Literacy Teachers

    Ask Mabel would support digital navigators, who we define as professionals and volunteers who teach formal tech classes to seniors. Digital Navigators are unable to create a practice arena for older adults to practice beyond the classroom setting. If older adults practice with Ask Mabel outside of their classrooms, they can revisit lessons and continue the work in the comfort of their personal space. Recognising that digital navigators have limited time and resources to provide after hours support, Ask Mabel would encourage a learn-as-you-go model while encouraging digital independence.

  3. Government Organisations

    Older adults often face difficulties navigating digital services that governmental organisations (such as the Human Resource Administration) require or prefer for them to use. If older adults use Ask Mabel to learn the kinds of skills they need to fill out these kinds of forms and track their cases, governmental organisations will benefit by not having to receive as many customer service requests. Consequently, government services can better allocate their resources to additional services to older adults rather than spending time troubleshooting with them.

We will seek out and welcome guidance on how we can best use these resources, from our network of startup founders and from IDEO. But, currently if awarded the prize money, we would like to use the sum for the following:

  • Outreach

    • We would like to direct a substantial portion of the budget toward older adult outreach. As our targeted population often tends to be homebound, limited on online reachability, and prefers a personal touch to their experience, we would like to partner with senior centers and other in-person avenues to reach the population. Also, we would also need to direct an amount of money toward increased marketing.

  • Building a team of tech literacy researchers and experts

    • We would invest up to 15% of the budget towards building a team of tech literacy researchers and experts in order to develop a curriculum that targets specific skill sets like texting basics, communication skills, and other skills that we might hear from our audience.

  • Participatory design and development

    • We would invest 5 to 10% of the budget in participatory design and development. We want our product to be built through co-design sessions and direct community feedback through usability tests and focus groups. The budget will be used to compensate participants, since our target is low income socio-economic families.

  • Additionally building an app-based experience

    • At this point, our intervention is low tech, however, as we begin to create personalized lesson plans and connect folks to economic opportunities, we look to invest our budget in building an app-based experience in the next phase of our product.

  • Team compensation

    • We will also need to use the funds to compensate the team. 

  • Ask Mabel is built using Webflow, a no-code platform. As our content grows, we need development support to move to a platform that can scale with our content. 

  • Our lesson plans stem from needs older adults have expressed - email, texts and video calling. For future lessons, we need curriculum developers to help with strategy.

  • We also need access to prospective investors and mentorship from those with expertise in gamified digital literacy. 

  • Because we want to continue co-designing with older adults, we want to find older adults to serve on an advisory board. 

  • We plan to grey-label our product, that is, provide our service through third party distribution, and we would like access to implementing partners to facilitate this.

  • Lastly, we need support with expansion into new geographic markets, starting with expanding beyond New York City, and looking at going global.

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  November 01, 2022

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Challenge Journey

Proposal Submission
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Comments
4
Michelle Lee

@Ayoola White @Tanushree Padath @Andan Eddy @Trina Nurse  thanks for sharing this project with us! I appreciate the thoughtfulness of approach with a text-based interface and the bite-sized lessons. I'm curious how you might make the content really appeal to this demographic, while also recognizing that aging adults love fun engaging interfaces just like other populations. The friendliness of putting a face to the interaction with Mabel is a great step in this direction. In case you haven't seen it, AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) is greatly invested in Inclusive Tech for Older Adults.

Rhea Gupta

Hi @Michelle Lee , so great to hear the appreciation from your end! We are definitely focusing on how we might leverage the benefits of gamification in cognitive processing for older adults. At this point, we are hearing from our community, the delight experienced upon receiving rewards - especially when we celebrate it with micro animations and imagery, while also keeping the interface easy to read and process. We are excited to find a space in the market for this, and being able to connect with folks at AARP. We look forward to our continued collaboration and support to bring older adults at the forefront of digital confidence.

Bansini Doshi

The first thing I really loved about this proposal was how its text-based rather than app-based. "Low-tech" digital spaces can serve an important purpose and your target audience is well suited to this! My grandparents would definitely find this very useful.

Rhea Gupta

Hi @Bansini Doshi , so great to hear such encouraging words from you! We would love for you to be a part of Ask Mabel's journey and understand how you and your grandparents find value in developing this further :)