Memorii

*an app thoughtfully designed to help seniors with memory problems remember and maintain independence. *

Youtube Video [link]https://youtu.be/EjPxi_oN7Uw

Google Drive [link]https://tinyurl.com/memorii-googledrive

Wireframe Prototype [link]https://tinyurl.com/memorii-prototype

Github [link]https://github.com/akash2004u/memorii

Documentation [link] https://tinyurl.com/memorii-documentation

Inspiration

About 40% of people aged 65 or older have age associated memory impairment—in the United States, about 16 million people. Only about 1% of them will progress to dementia each year. - The National Center for Biotechnology Information

It is evident that the use of new technologies by the elderly population significantly contributes to a better quality of life, improving parameters of daily living such as transportation facilitation, communication and participation in social life. - Health Science Journal

We wanted to create an app that is first and foremost catered towards social good but at the same time can easily be retrofitted to different uses in other industries. We wanted it to address a big problem and we want to prioritize inclusivity

With that in mind, we chose to address memory loss among elderlies.

What It Does

Memorii has been built with a simple and easy to use interface to assist elderly people.

1) Labeling an Article 2) Retrieving information using labels

Part 1: Info Input

Memorii gives family members and caretakers the opportunity to save information that elders can easily retrieve anytime.

Through the app, family members can print a label with a QR code that houses the information they wish to associate with a certain object.

Aside from text, they can also add photos, videos, audios, and links they want their label to be associated with.

For privacy & security, access to information can be set to private or public.

Other members of the family or the caretaking team can participate in creating labels through the “Shared Projects” feature.

Part 2

Keeping in mind that seniors can get easily intimidated with technology, we purposefully designed the info retrieval process to be as simple as possible.

Through the native camera app of any Android or iOS smartphone or tab, memory-challenged folks can retrieve the information anytime with just one scan.

How We Built It

Tech Stack Used: Memorii is built as a native mobile app using flutter in order to target multiple platforms including Android & IOS. Interface uses material design guidelines in order to make it more accessible and easy to use.

Brother print SDK is incorporated in the app to assist labelling and printing.

For information storage and retrieval we have used NodeJs based Server hosted on AWS Lambda along with DynamoDB as a store. Using Lambda helps us reduce the costs as app usage grows.

Challenges We Run Into

Akash

Learning flutter in order to build the app for cross platform.
Printer integration throwing “WRONG_LABEL_INFO” without any other debug information took 2 days to troubleshoot and fix.
Making app accessible and feature rich at the same time causes different complex challenges.

Chickee

Making sure the design is the simplest it can be so older adults and seniors can use it.
Getting user feedback with social distancing in mind.

Together

Coming up with an idea that will require the least onboarding process for seniors.
Due to the COVID 19, the hackathon was transitioned to an online event. Chickee had to move from Seattle to Ohio to social distance. While Akash needed to work from home while taking care of his daughter.

Accomplishments We Are Proud Of

Akash

Learned flutter in 3 days and built the first prototype with hardware integration.
Learned material design in order to make app UI accessible

Chickee

Finishing the wireframes in 3 days.
Learning video editing from scratch.

Together

Successfully building something that has a huge potential and possibly a game changer in the geriatric care and other industries as well.

What We Learned

Akash

As a software developer it’s always easy to get diverged into multi technologies for the sake of being technically advanced. This hackathon event and memorii app gave me an opportunity to use the skills and technology to build something that can be used by elderly and in need.

Working on Memorii gave me an opportunity to learn how to build accessible apps for people with limited exposure to smart phones.

Technically I learnt Flutter to build cross platform apps with hardware integration.

Chickee

As a former nurse, I already have a decent knowledge about geriatric care. But researching for the app gave me a better understanding about the differences of memory loss, the diseases that have it as a symptom, and ways on how to prevent it.

I also learned about creative approaches on how to take care of people with memory loss problems.

As a UX Designer, I learned about

The color palettes of different decades
Better ways of renaming components, wireframes, etc.
Horizontal scroll prototyping
Using Figma plugins
Using “Smart Animate” feature of Figma
How to edit video via Powtoon and other video editing softwares

Together

We learned how create an app for a physical device.

What is Next

We started this app with a vision to build a platform to offer labeling and retrieval service. This service can be leveraged not only by memorii but many other similar applications with respective domains.

Few of the extensions of this platform can make it an awesome candidate for establishments like

Museums : To generate identification logos, which can be scanned by visitors to have advance information around the product
Retail Stores: To label articles in store , which can be used by shoppers to access additional attributes like, nutritional value of food items.
Manufacturing: To label products in the warehouse / assembly line to associate different sets of metadata with the product.

Technically, we would like to extend the features of the app and make it available for a wider audience. Following are the activities that we need to perform this production ready