Evaluation

The fact that people become less connected with their social network when they get older, was the basis of this project. The KeyPing tries to enhance the feeling of social connectedness by indicating the presence of several (self-chosen) contact persons and without actually contacting these persons through mail or phone. During user tests in particular, it became clear that this vision, translated into a prototype, was quite hard to communicate and understand. This page evaluates the final prototype from different angles; users, the client, the design team and from a technology point of view.

User feedback

During the whole project, the team actively had the user in mind. In earlier stages of the project, the main question was whether the general concept of a board with lightning and sounds was intuitively understandable as a feeling of connectedness. It is not possible to create a feeling without this intuitiveness because people would be too busy with understanding the meaning of the lightning and sound of the board. This could evolve to an unbalance between effort and response which would make the whole system unsuccessful.
The studies and the user-centered approach were of high importance while designing the KeyPing. An interesting example of this mindset is that the KeyPing can be personalized in various ways. It is known to the team that there are too many options to personalize in the current model. An important question is which parts of the board can be personalized to what extent without losing the intuitive understanding of the principles.
The sound study showed that key sounds are associated most to the home coming feeling, without being obtrusive or scary (such as a squeaking door or footsteps). We rejected the idea to record personal sounds because most people easily recognize the sound of keys, but we propose to perform further research about this in the future. A comparable study can be done about the effect of (LED) lights as an indication of activity and presence.
At last, the user studies showed that the KeyPing is applicable for up to seven contacts without losing overview. However, it is possible that the end-users want to have more contacts. If so, the effect on the understandability of multiple contacts have to be studied in further research.

Designer feedback

The target group of KeyPing is elderly and their connections. During the designing process of the board, other possibilities for the system arose. For instance, the system could provide an easy notification for physical mail (when your mailbox is at the front yard) and could even be connected to digital social network groups as Facebook and MSN. Although these and other possibilities lie way beyond the current scope of this project, they could enhance the success of the product and are therefore to be considered.