Binh Nguyen Portfolio

Overview

Smartphone app for elderly

My project will be for the elderly, about 60+ years old. It is a smartphone app that includes a virtual assistant that interacts with who uses the app, it has similarities with Siri, Bixby, … but it is easier and can fulfill the elderly’s need. For example, it can help calibrate the smartphone’s screen to fit the old ones’ vision, remind job that they need to do, or read text on the screen for them. The virtual assistant may talk and chat with them, providing information/ topics that fit their interest, help them connect with other same age people.

My motivation

This project gets inspiration from the fact that the population of our planet is getting older, this trend is especially relevant in developed Western countries. According to UNO estimations, the number of people aged 60+ will reach more than 2 billion people by 2050, which gives the seniors markets a huge opportunity for developers to jump in (Luvivity 2020).

However, the number of apps for this market is still very underdeveloped, while “nearly three quarters (74%) of 50-64 year-olds own a smartphone, while a little less than half (42%) of individuals who are 65 or older own a smartphone, according to Pew Research Center’s Mobile Fact Sheet, which is updated regularly throughout 2017” (Clutch.co 2020, para. 4).

My target is to step in this area and make an app that can inspire other developers to focus more on this market, thus improve the overall quality and performance of those apps. While the seniors are meeting with many problems such as loneliness, hearing loss, change in vision, etc. (Cdc.gov 2020), I want to somehow partly have a solution to help them with it.

App Description

Measure health status

Heart rate, blood pressure, vision and then provide that information not just on screen but through voice. Then the software will analyses and recommend the elderly solutions. The health information could be fetched from wearable devices. I want this function to act as a home-doctor.

Danger warn

As people with high age tends to be slower, they cannot react quickly enough to the environment. They can feel dizzy, sudden fall, trip, etc. and the application can sense it and notify to the trusted contacts that has saved it its memory. During that time, it can play a loud audio to call for help.

Help people with hearing loss

They can use the Speech-to-text function to help convert the speech on the smartphone screen so they can read.

Assist

Remind of to-do tasks, searching information from the Internet, basic task on the smartphone (read a book, change the brightness, play the music, etc.). It can understand the task from both text and voice input.

Connect to other people

Works as social media for seniors, which can prevent them from loneliness. From the data it received every day, it can find the best match friend for them.

Conversation

It can function as a person to talk with the elderly, makes them feel like this app is their friend.

Tools and Technologies

The application will run on either Android or IOS, and it may connect with other wearable devices for health measurement

Teamwork

Asana – the task management app and Git is a great set of tools to use

Skills required

This application should not require any special hardware, so it is also an obstacle: there are many and many models of smartphones and the execution time of the app will be different between apps, especially app with machine learning function. So besides Java and Python coding skills, this project requires good math and deep understanding of machine learning to optimize the algorithm. This type of apps will generate a lot of bugs; however, it is also a chance to keep upgrading and improving this app. Therefore, quality control and planning skills are essential. With a project that is big like this, it is obvious that teamwork skills are very important too.

Outcome

If this project is successful, it will provide the seniors with a great addition to their life, and even make their life easier and more entertaining. I hope that this project can even inspire other developers to improve and complete all the functions above, or even upgrade it to a completely new and more convenient one. But for now, this application can solve some fundamental problems with the seniors’ life, and I want to make it available for free so that many people can enjoy it. The hardest part – the advanced function from section 3 above may not be perfect, but with my plan, it will get smarter and end up being a better assistant that does not feel “mechanical”. It will not be just an application, but it could be a good friend with the seniors.

Wellcome to my future project