Sage
Connecting seniors with meaningful companionship through video calls
Why I Built This
I pitched this app idea to my team because I've always been especially close to my grandma. As she's gotten older and I left for college, I saw that technology and calling was something she frequently wanted to do but had difficulty with—buttons and text were small, and apps had too many complex features that weren't senior-friendly. Popups and ads would get in her way of being able to call her friends, and more importantly, me!
It turns out this isn't just my grandma's experience. More than one-third of adults aged 45+ feel lonely, and nearly 27% of American seniors live alone.
The Solution
Sage is a web application that facilitates meaningful connections for elderly adults through video calls. Users can connect with volunteer strangers matched by shared interests, or reach out to trusted friends and caregivers in their personal network.
Key Features
- One-click video calling to connect with volunteers or personal contacts
- Interest-based matching algorithm for volunteer pairings
- User authentication and profile creation
- Real-time notification system
- Accessibility-focused interface with larger text options
User Story
We first started with a user story to better understand our target user.
Lo-fi Prototypes
I kicked off our app-design with some concept sketching and lo-fi prototyping. My writing was a little messy here; we were under a time crunch!
Hi-fi Prototypes
We started out with a mobile app concept, but we decided to switch to a web app to allow for larger text/accessibility. We created a hi-fi prototype for our web app using Figma.
Engineering
For frontend, we used a combination of Next.js, React, Material UI, and CSS. There are a variety of different screens including the login/sign-up page, the request call, and the call page. As this is a Next.js application, we used the serverless function as a primary backend. We used Twilio to implement the video call feature, and additionally ran a Flask server to support the sockets. Twilio's Programmable Video API was used to facilitate calls between users and Websockets were used in conjunction with Flask to match users online at the same time.
Screens
Here are a few of our screens: