Getting to the essence of the user needs

Combining our initial research of media research and user interviews, along with our feedback from the focus groups, we came up with a list of needs to address in our design prototype.

• Technical terms like "enter"/"return" will be a turn off to the seniors.
• Ideally, seniors don't want to learn any more at their age.
• Senior don't like to be forced to learn new things (though they enjoy learning about things they care about)
• Seniors want something effortless (often asking: "How much effort will this take?")
• Seniors would an easy to use interface ("SIMPLE, Simple! One button and everything happens.")
• Seniors view themselves as active people
• Seniors are actively encouraged in their community
• Seniors actively work to maintain connections with friends and family, and even other seniors as well

In particular, our users needs could be boiled down to four primarily themes: