SKYPELINE DEVELOPMENT FOLIO
When I interviewed Marjie Walker, who runs The Link Visiting Scheme, it was clear to her that the best way to combat loneliness was through increased social connection, but that a lot of elderly people from separate households find it a challenge to meet up with each other.
To me, this was an unusually perfect design opportunity: to enable someone to video chat, that can't currently manage it!
The landline has fundamentally remained unchanged for a number of years, and so the project quickly became about simplifying the user's journey, of using a landline to video chat.
It was clear that as an internet enabled landline, calls would need to be made through a user's internet connection, albeit interfaced in the traditional landline form.
In order to preserve the look and feel of a traditional landline, I decided the best way to simplify the user's journey was to dock the phone in a purpose made location, in part of the screen.
The big clue for the user here (aside from the phone shaped gap!) would be that the two brightly coloured similar shapes go together.
When on a call, if video calling is unsupported, a red light would show in the skypeline docking screen. A green light would show instead if a supported device was on the line, allowing the user to transfer to a video call by docking the phone into the screen.
Skypeline has no settings to configure, and no on/off switches anywhere as both the dock and screen are self waking when a call is active. There are no buttons on the screen at all, with the only functionality required being to transfer to and from video chat (docking/undocking). All call controls are controlled through the handset, including volume and hanging up.
The size of the screen and phone were carefully considered - a full size traditional landline phone to maintain that traditional landline feel, coupled with a small to medium sized screen to keep it light enough to be mobile for the user.
The dock was reduced in height, relative to the height of the screen, to further draw attention and emphasise it as an interaction point, as well as making it easy to dock and undock the handset by allowing a large area to easily grab.
