Hack Away the Loneliness

January 31, 2020 Design, Event, Gerontechnology, Intergenerational, On Location, Solutions, United States

Earlier this month, University of California, Davis (UCD) hosted its sixth annual HackDavis where about 600 college students came together not only from UCD but from universities all over, to design, code and test their ideas for social good. They were given 24 hours, stretching over a Saturday night, to deliver their solutions.

For those new to this scene, Wikipedia’s definition of a hackathon is “a design sprint-like event; often, in which computer programmers and others involved in software development, including graphic designers, interface designers, project managers, domain experts, and others collaborate intensively on software projects.”

When you walk into the pavilion, you could feel the energy – the thrill of the challenge and anticipation of what would materialize by the end of the weekend. For me, it was nostalgic of those college days of working together on teams to get something accomplished with challenges in personalities, roadblocks, and sleep deprived brains winding down, craving a caffeine boost to survive the night.

Most hackers came with their own ideas of particular social problems they wanted to solve. The event spotlighted three non-profits’ missions to inspire those who didn’t have a plan. One was Benetech, who empowers communities with software for social good and another was the Children’s Scoliosis Foundation. The third was a combined effort from Aging2.0, and Roze-Bear Foundation, the non-profit that provides support to programs and services for isolated and lonely adults.

As a Chapter Ambassador for Aging2.0, I presented the shifting demographics as we’re living longer lives due to advances in technology, healthcare breakthroughs and fewer births. I joked about how these young college students may not be thinking about what life is like as older persons but they should, because the challenges affects their grandparents, parents and one day, they will affect them.

This was the segue to a very specific, growing issue in society. Rebecca Graulich, Co-Founder of Roze Bear Foundation, presented on the harmful effects of elder isolation and loneliness. She mentioned the eye-opening statistics:

More than 40% of seniors regularly experience loneliness, according to a University of California, San Francisco study¹;
Lacking social connections is as damaging to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day²;
Coronary bypass patients who report feeling lonely have a mortality rate five times higher than other patients 30 days post-surgery³;
Lonely individuals have a 64% increased chance of developing clinical dementia⁴;
People who are lonely report 5% more severe symptoms in the common cold than those who are less lonely⁵; and
Those who are extremely socially isolated cost about $130 per month more in Medicare spending than their non- or less-isolated counterparts⁶.

The stage was set. The hackers were let loose. The countdown clock began.

The hackathon brought in food for the students, volunteers and speakers. Even a midnight snack and scheduled games kept blood flowing. Organizers provided badminton equipment so hackers could take that break and get some physical activity. Thank goodness for those disposable toothbrushes with toothpaste that is activated with saliva. Some students brought pillows and sleeping bags in preparation for the long the night.

When I returned the second day, I noticed less than half of the students were around. However, closer to the 24-hour deadline the pavilion quickly filled back up.

One of the organizers, Brandon, mentioned that this year they had a higher than usual submission rate of ideas. Typically the rate is about 50%. This year it was closer to two-thirds of people who initially signed up returned. There were 110 teams with no more than 4 people that submitted a wide-range of solutions, including minimizing food wastage, monitoring energy usage, managing mental health, jogging memories after an encounter with someone who has committed a crime, rescuing animals in need, sorting recyclables more effectively, mitigating food allergy reactions by identifying food ingredients in prepared food and even monitoring caffeine consumption to optimize performance.

Hackers were provided a suite of Google tools that they could use if they wanted. They included machine learning application programming interfaces (APIs) (Vision, Nature Language, Translate, Video, Speech-to-Text, Text-to-Speech), Firebase, App Engine and Cloud Firestore. Students had the ability to experiment and deepen their experience and technical knowledge.

Each team submitted their designs along with their answers to a set of questions, not only describing what it is they created, what inspired them and how they technically built it but also mentioning what specific challenges they ran into, accomplishments they were proud of and what they learned.

Interestingly enough, there were several entries that addressed the topic of loneliness but they weren’t specifically targeted for older adults to use. They were:

SentiVent: An app that helps college students deal with loneliness and mental health issues. It encourages journaling and based on the content if a student needs help, the app uses geolocation and provides resources in the area at the users’ fingertips.

MachoMate: A solution that addresses two challenges: loneliness and lack of exercise, two contributors to health problems. It connects people and gives them motivation to go to the gym or exercise more often. Specifically it matches people fairly new to exercise to those who are more experienced.

ProximityPals: An app that encourages meaningful engagement between people by looking for other devices in the vicinity. It identifies people who share similar interests, passions and hobbies by notifying users when they are around each other. It also has a virtual chatroom allowing users to schedule a meet-up.

Komma: A solution that supports posting and viewing of all college campus events by students to give like-minded people an opportunity to connect and decrease student loneliness to support mental health.

Then there were three teams who developed solutions around the specific issue of elder isolation with the key being to connect them to younger people:

GenShare: This offering provides a matchmaking of sorts where older adults can host events to teach the younger generation various skills or share experiences. It offers companionship through a shared experience together and connects the generations as skills are passed on to the younger generation.

A younger user may log in and want to learn a new skill. S/he would log in and click on “LEARN”. Whereas an older user with knowledge of some skill can enter the site through the “TEACH” button and offer a class ranging from cooking, gardening, music, dancing and more.

This team had a very simple and clear user interface utilizing helpful design best practices of high contrast and non-distracting calls to action.

Lionheart: This product uses volunteer opportunities as the vehicle to connect older adults, “[W]e strive to encouraged elderly to step out and engage in voluntary experiences that appeal to them. The success of the app would also bring elderly of similar interest together and therefore mitigate the negative risk associated with social isolation and loneliness.” This solution provides a platform for the older participants “to sign up for meaningful voluntary experiences, in the process, finding new company with similar interest and a greater sense of purpose in life. It currently recommends new events to the elderly based off of a nearest-neighbor classifier that compares various factors (interest, skills, past events and ratings) between registered users.”

Besides learning technical skills, the Lionheart team gained “a greater appreciation for how other humanitarian disciplines (e.g. economics and psychology) could be integrated into app design and development to make the experience better for our target users.”

This development team carefully considered how to introduce their product to potential users, how data could be utilized and future benefits to the older user.

Lionheart uses past participation data to offer user suggestions on opportunities to volunteer in the future, “As a database and portfolio of past events of an elderly is collected, a friend network feature will be introduced to him/her. Rather than introducing it immediately when the elderly first start the app, possibly overwhelming them with the various feature, a progressive disclosure allows the elderly to ease into the app. The feature informs the elderly of other users, with similar past events attended and interest, that may be attending the same event as them, encouraging them to befriend each other. LionHeart strives to increase the users social circle to combat elderly loneliness.”

The data could be beneficial for the organizations the older volunteers serve, “Data collected from the app can be used for targeted outreach. Voluntary organizations can access these information to organize their events in regions where their specific experience would face greater support, increasing the effectiveness of voluntary program. While we’re currently recommending based off of a nearest-neighbor classifier, when the recommendation engine has sufficient data on the user, further profiling can be done on the type of experience the users took part in and recommend them new events based off of their own portfolio.” In short, they would use geolocation and profile information to suggest to organizations what type of events they could host to optimize volunteer interest and turnout.

This team thought beyond volunteering and what if participants want to return to work, which may not be easy to do. Their solution also can also highlight their skills and experience. In addition, “the network they make from volunteering with the organizations could also be useful in landing them a job in a field of their interest.”

Lionheart did an excellent job of thinking about different possibilities this platform could serve for both the organizations and users involved.

Unfortunately, the way the judging was organized and lack of time to scan all the 100 plus projects, made it difficult to know which ones specifically served the older population. As a result, we were unaware of two additional digital innovations until after the event was over.

Two Cents: The team that developed this solution was inspired by the challenge many older adults face later in life, “As a person ages, their sense of purpose begins to decline or stops altogether once they retire from the workforce or can no longer perform physically intense activities. Much like fresh college graduates, the aging population may think, “What now?” after accruing so much knowledge and wisdom that only comes with experience, lifelong lessons and indispensable tips are waiting to be shared with and implemented by the younger generations.”

Their solution provides an opportunity for older adults to “share their opinion or advice on anything in life, such as analyzing a math problem to zesting a lemon to anyone curious on an interest or hobby via Q&A on topics they may have special interest or passion about. The possibilities of what advice could be shared depends only on the person who can give their input. While the platform would not bar younger people from answering or connecting with others, the older population, based on age at sign-up, would be favored in answering questions proposed by anyone in that special interest they chose during sign up.”

It would have been interesting to see how their workflow worked from the moment a question was posed to how they are answered. The team described it as, “to avoid questions being forever unanswered, a time limit to answer would be given before deferred to someone else to answer. When posed with a question, the person would be able to accept or decline if they wanted to answer a question in case they do not feel they have an authority on the topic at hand. After a question is answered, a window would pop up on the person who asked the question’s page whether or not they would want to add the answerer as a friend to continue further discussion. A friend system would also be implemented in case people wanted to add people immediately. A chat with a random person on a certain topic would also be implemented.”

Then there was one solution targeted for older adults, not related to isolation and loneliness.

Retrained: This digital solution encourages older adults to stay active and log their physical activity. The design team created their app based on the idea that “Staying active is essential for maintaining strength, mobility, independence, and general wellness” and specifically focused on issues such as “lack of motivation, frustration and fear of injury.” Retrained “provides a personalized exercise/stretch for specific areas of pain or discomfort. Users can target a certain area of their body and then customize a desired exercise based upon intensity and location. Retrained will then provide multiple suggested exercises with descriptions and time lengths to choose from. Upon completing a program, the app will log the exercise completed as well as the user’s mood afterwards. Retrained can then be used to consistently track pain areas, and measure progress and mood. The journal can be viewed at any time under a “Progress” tab for family members and medical professionals to get a more complete perspective on the user’s condition.”

Across one weekend, teams were able to successfully build a minimum viable product within 24 hours, learning new skills and tools along the way – all for the greater good. While they were tinkering with technology, they were also broadening their horizons by looking at various social challenges across the globe, honing in on specific issues and then figuring out ways to address them through technology. Many of them intend to carry on their projects by pursuing further development, scalability and researching market viability.

Hackathons are definitely a productive way to reach the younger generation and give them food for thought on societal issues that need their attention and active problem solving. They are fertile ground to plant the seeds. Even if they didn’t address issues that older adults face today, they left with the knowledge somewhere in their minds. Next time they hear about the challenges in aging, it might just pique their interest and even better, it might call them to action.