Tutors: Prof. Daniel Utz, Prof. Jürgen Hoffmann
Team size: 2 People (with Julian Walz)
Date: October 2020 – February 2021
My role: Research, conception, design, animation

viertel is a neighbourhood community aimed at reintegrating lonely, elderly people into society. This project was the final dissertation of my bachelor's studies. The issue we chose to address is of significant relevance, and the covid pandemic emphasised its importance even more. People who are pensioned often end up living alone, with limited access to social interaction. To find out more about the problem itself and ways to tackle it, we went into a research phase, interviewing affected individuals and reading subject literature. We also did a competitor analysis and talked to several organizations with the same objective. Unfortunately, the results of our research confirmed our hypothesis: Almost 70% of the interviewed people admitted feeling lonely at least twice a week.

We then took a closer look at the housing situation of our participants to differentiate whether individuals living alone were more affected than those living in a nursing home. To counteract this issue, we figured it would be best to reconnect the people to their neighbourhood because elderly people are often restricted in their mobility. For relationships to prosper and last, there had to be a proper base to build on. That’s why people sharing the same interests and hobbies can connect using viertel. To advertise viertel initially, we chose to use billboards in public spaces. The corresponding app enables the user to see and contact other users based on the interests they have in common. The interface is designed as simple as possible to enable easy and fast usage, with large fonts and buttons for visually impaired users. The bright and vibrant colour scheme is supposed to encourage and motivate, which actively counteracts the grey and monotone colours most associated with loneliness.