Mather Chat
Mather Chat is a service within the Mather Live platform that brings liveliness to online interactions by enriching participant engagement, driving curiosity and connection.
Overview
Mather, founded in 1941, is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating ways to age well for older adults (aged 50+). Their mission is to transform the way people view aging.
Amidst Covid-19 social distancing, Mather looked to reinvent their online Mather Live service platform. How might we combat loneliness by enhancing virtual connections and driving participant engagement?
Roles
Project management, research, interviews and user tests, concept ideation
Client
I. Discover
As students learning virtually, our team empathized with the desire to connect virtually. We researched analogous service within and beyond the existing the scope of Mather’s offerings. This included attending Mather course offerings, called ‘Telephone Topics', such as yoga, poetry, meditation, and more.
Explore the scope
We conducted twelve user interviews and four stakeholder interviews with Mather instructors in continuation of our research phase.
Interviews
Peggy, 67 years old
Lives alone in Delray Beach, Florida near her daughter’s family
Active member of the Mather community, tuning into as many classes as possible
Wishes she could make friends with other attendees, but she has a hard time connecting with others over the phone
Persona
II. Define
Key pain points were identified during synthesis.
Insights
Mather’s ‘Telephone Topics’ course offering was built content rich but not connection driven.
Most users join without video but admit it makes connecting with others difficult.
In the rare opportunities for users to freely chat, the large attendance numbers make it difficult to carry conversation.
“It gets messy if a bunch of people start talking at once during class, so we don’t have the luxury of hanging out. But I feel like people kind of need that.”
Lessons are timed and have a structured itinerary leaving limited opportunities for organic conversation.
These laddered up to a key observation:
III. Develop
In a cycle, we iterated through key concepts and features created from opportunity areas by user testing low fidelity prototypes and host a mock session of our solution.
Concept, ideate, evaluate 🔁
IV. Deliver
Features
Service Journey Map
Mather Chat is a service which provides discussion time for older adults like Peggy, who yearn for more interaction with their peers.
Mather Chat relies on Breakout Rooms to allow for more thorough and personal conversations. Topics will come directly from Mather Chat users, with added resources to help if there is a lull in conversation.
Product Purpose
Resources
The service journey requires key resources.
Mather Chat has a simple structure that is familiar to users for an easy service adoption.
Service Blueprint
Before joining a session, Peggy is able to create her own “Mather Chat profile” where she enters contact info, areas of interest, and available times to chat.
When Peggy first enters the call, there’s 15 minutes of general conversation, being sure to give time for participants to filter in. Peggy can share highlights from her day, and hear stories from friends.
Next is 10 minutes to Find Focus - in this time users will bring up interesting topics of discussion for the day. Her friend Earnie wanted to talk about a music history telephone topic he went to, and Peggy is hooked.
They then go into 30 minutes of organized breakout room discussion, where Peggy, Earnie and company can go into as much detail as they want about music history. If they run out of things to talk about, their breakout room facilitator has a handy deck of Chat Cards to use to keep the conversation going.
Next, Peggy and the rest of her breakout group return to the main room for 5 minutes to debrief and close out the day.
After the Chat ends, there is an optional 5-10 minutes where Peggy is able to give any feedback she might have to the Mather Employee on the call. If Peggy is feeling shy, or doesn’t have time to give her feedback verbally, she can navigate to an online survey on the Mather Website to voice her concerns or other notes.
Stakeholder Feedback
“Thanks to all of you for your great work on this project! It was fun to work with all of you. We really appreciate the fresh insights and new perspectives you provided.”
V. Debrief
Key Learnings
Immersive experiences lead to a deeper, intimate understanding of the service for both researchers in the discovery phase and users in the testing phase.
User base demographics vary widely as with it the best research methods and design tools.
It’s important to consider product accessibility.
The team, the team, the team
Thank you to Roni Greenberg, Paige Hendersen, and Julia Perche for making our project nextraordinary. Special thank you to the Mather Community for allowing us to listen and learn from you; you have transformed our understanding of aging.
