Type of Work
Product Design, Service Design
My Role
The Challenge
Immigrants whose elderly parents back home feel helpless and guilty when it comes to caring for them from overseas.
The Outcome
DinDin is a service that allows you to stay connected with your family. Especially those who are away from each other. DinDin helps families hold each other accountable for their personal health through facilitated activities.
Giving Voices through Intergenerational Care
The facilitated activities such as puzzle, yoga, journals, book club are recommended by the service based on the families’ goals and demographics. They give voices to the children and elderly parents who play huge roles in transnational families but have not been given a lot of attention.
Background
Opportunities
are a major driver of migration.
Migration improves their income, their access to education and health, and provide better prospects for their family.
But, many families remain separated, which makes it hard to keep track of each other.
Transnational caregiving is a process involving the challenges of time, money, family life cycle stage, health considerations, work demands, competing household obligations, crisis care, visa limitations, travel costs, mismatched cultural expectations, and use of communication technology.
Why not just bring them with you?
Neither financially viable nor the best solution as it might be hard for them to adapt and may lead to social isolation and parents want to feel independent.
Current US immigration policies are more focused on individual migrant and severely limits family-based immigration. This leaves many families remain separated (not only at borders).
The Users
Getting the child involved in the care
After learning that the monitoring technology may not be the best way to address the issue of emotional connection, I prototyped a platform DinDin that brings the children of immigrants into the equation.
The grandparents or adult immigrants often said that interacting with or seeing the children grow is one of the joys for elderly parents.
At the same time, second-generation immigrants often faced with identity confusion, conflicts between the country they grow up in and the culture their parents are from. With this in mind, the interactions in the form of intergenerational care is an opportunity to address the pain points of all parties involved in the immigrant family.
DinDin helps families hold each other accountable for their personal health through facilitated activities.
Children's interaction with DinDin
Adult immigrants' interaction with DinDin
After testing with the relevant stakeholders like the parents and grandparents, I redefined the experiences of the ‘Get notified’ experience of the journey map.
Signing up
When she doesn't pick up
The user needs to make a quick decision whether it's something she has to wait for a bit to call back or has to call everyone.
The notification shows that the caregiver and dr’s office tried to reach her.
Impact
DinDin will make an impact on the improved health of the parents, feelings of connectedness and relief through intergenerational care
