In 2016 there were over 41.000 elderly living alone in Singapore. Singapore's Red Cross ElderAid Program visited their beneficiaries twice a month to check in and keep them company, but how can the Red Cross monitor the elderly when the volunteers are not around.
The first answer, and initial briefing, was to recruit more volunteers in order to increase the rate of visits, and since Red Cross wished to target a younger audience, social media seemed like the right place to execute whatever campaign we would create.
But I couldn't help to think that even if we recruited thousands of volunteers it wouldn't be possible to give daily support to such a large crowd in need.
This question lingering led the team to push the boundaries of the briefing, and through brainstorming with the Facebook team, ELLA was born, Singapore's Red Cross first digital volunteer.
ELLA not only informed and recruited the younger audience but also checked in daily with beneficiaries of the ElderAid program, to perform tasks like, remind them to take their medication, share entertaining content. Perhaps the most important feature was the alarm red cross would get if the beneficiaries didn't reply to Ella's prompts for an extended period . This would signal that maybe something is wrong and a volunteer would establish a personal phone call to check on the well-being of the elder.
The first hurdle we encountered was that most of the program's beneficiaries were not digitally literate and possessed no smartphones equipped with the Facebook messenger app.
So after identifying the 3 elders that possessed a smartphone we carried out a trial period of Ella's prototype for a month.
Our key learning from our trial was that the Elderly don't possess the smartphone usage behavior necessary to make Ella a real tool to monitor them.
Even though some of the features, like the medication reminder, were appreciated, many days they simply forgot to check their phones, triggering a false alarm to the red cross volunteers.
This fact brought the project to its end.
I'm still proud of the idea and believe that in the future digital companions that combat loneliness and provide basic reminders will be the norm.
