It is becoming a problem that the number of people who have loneliness by a physical distance between family members has lately kept increasing. Home is not only about space, but also about where an individual makes memories, feels secured with its familiarity and feels comfortable with his or her family member(s). Individuals, who live alone and feel lonely, have not been getting these senses. The available ways of connection between remote family members are not enough.

The aim of the research is to understand the current condition of the connection between remote family members to map pain points. The purpose is to develop a product that can decrease a sense of loneliness and increase positive emotions through an experience which makes a lonely individual feel a little bit more connected to a long-distance family in everyday life.

Based on the in-depth interviews, eight insights and two kinds of stakeholders, whom the connection should be made between, was revealed. Over forty ideas were created to solve the problem of loneliness based on the defined insights and stakeholders, and the ideas were narrowed down on the criteria of to what extent the idea can satisfy the revealed insights and to what extent the connection created by each idea can last easily between the two stakeholders.

The resulting product called One Home Lamp can provide an emotionally warmer experience to a target user than other similar products do with four main features: 1) a connection which lasts in everyday life in a way that everyone can keep in touch with each other more easily, 2) a better sense of identity which belongs to each family by customization with colour and stickers, 3) a better sense of belongingness towards a family by seeing an imaginal house where you and your family live together, 4) a better sense of touch which is closer to human warmth with the material and soft texture used.

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The result is beneficial for modern societies in terms of the fact that it has a great possibility to reduce loneliness, increase positive emotions and improve well-being among lonely individuals which is one of the sustainable development goals to be achieved by 2030 advocated by the United Nations General Assembly.

Keywords

Loneliness, well-being, a sense of connection, long-distance family, human-centred design

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my sincere appreciation to my two supervisors. Miguel Salinas of the Department of Design at Linnaeus University. I am gratefully indebted for his very valuable feedback on this thesis. He was always there for me whenever I had a question about my research and writing. Britt Monti of IKEA of Sweden. I would like to pay my special regards to her for her patience, motivation and open-mindedness which helped me to step forward even in a difficult time. Also, I would like to thank some special people from IKEA of Sweden who have kindly contributed to my thesis project. Tony Carlsson. He connected students at Linnaeus University to IKEA of Sweden for the opportunity where a new perspective was made and new ideas were created. Marco Guadarrama. He gave me great feedback and insight into the final concept from the perspective of user experience and smart home to help me create a better user experience as an IKEA Homesmart solution. Eva-Carin Banka Johnson. She introduced me to how IKEA of Sweden works with the home visit in detail in order to understand user needs by using an internal online platform including its challenges.

I would like to thank the experts who were involved in the thesis from the academic point of view: Laia Colomer Solsona and Maria Hanna Eriksson. They taught me mindsets and knowledge on how to design a research project. I am also indebted to my thesis partner Nahian Rahman for his help throughout the period of the project. I wish to acknowledge all

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and the surveys. The thesis would not be achieved without their help. I also wish to thank all of my teachers and classmates for motivating me to learn new things through my period of study.

Last but not least, I would like to express my very profound gratitude to my parents, my grandmother and grandfather, my friends and my boyfriend for providing me with continuous support and encouragement throughout two and half years of my study. They always made me feel confident in my abilities. This huge accomplishment for me would not have been possible without them. Thank you so much.

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1. Introduction

1.1 Project Description and Presentation of Results

Individuals who live alone tend to feel more lonely than others who live with family members. The ratio of individuals who live alone is 60% in Stockholm and 50% in Berlin respectively, and it is becoming a problem that the number of people who have loneliness by a physical distance between other family members has lately kept increasing. Home is where an individual makes memories, feels secured with its familiarity and feels comfortable with his or her family member(s). Individuals, who live alone and feel lonely, have not been getting these feelings. This shows that the available ways of connection between remote family members are not enough.

The aim of the research is to understand the current condition where individuals are connected to remote family members in order to grasp pain points. The purpose is to develop a solution that can decrease a sense of loneliness and increase positive emotions through the experience which makes a lonely individual feel a little bit more connected to a long-distance family in everyday life. Several things have been done. First, eight insights: A) More interactive companionship B) Long-lasting effects C) Limitation D) Non-verbal information E) Tactility F) Mobility G) Inclusivity H) Effectiveness and simplicity from the in-depth interviews were found. Also, two kinds of stakeholders to be considered were revealed: one is an individual who has a family member(s) who lives alone and another is an individual who has a busy life so you struggle to maintain the connection with the person who lives alone.

The connection which should be made exists between the two stakeholders. Then, over forty ideas were created in a unique brainstorming session where participants were motivated to come up with ideas thinking out of the box based on the defined insights and stakeholders.

The idea selection has been done based on to what extent each idea can satisfy the insights and to what extent the idea can satisfy both two stakeholders’ desire at a higher level. This was done based on an assumption that considering both stakeholders’ desire would lead to a long-lasting connection between them in everyday life. As a result of this, a concept of the product called One Home Lamp was developed.

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This product can provide an emotionally warmer experience to a target user than other similar products do with four main features: 1) a connection which lasts in everyday life in a way that everyone can keep in touch with each other more easily, 2) a better sense of identity which belongs to each family by customization with colour and stickers, 3) a better sense of belongingness towards a family by seeing an imaginal house where you and your family live together, 4) a better sense of touch which is closer to human warmth with the material and soft texture used.

The result is beneficial for modern societies in terms of the fact that the final concept as a product called One Home Lamp has a great possibility to reduce loneliness, increase positive emotions and improve well-being among lonely individuals which is one of the sustainable development goals by the UN.

IKEA

This research has another aspect that two students, the author of this thesis from the Department of Design and another partner from the Department of Engineering at Linnaeus University aim to develop a solution as a product for IKEA of Sweden with tutoring by them throughout the process. In 2020, IKEA got a negative impact from the pandemic and approximately three-hundred fifty stores needed to shut down for seven months on average and the sales of goods has decreased compared to last year. The physical distance between potential IKEA customers is becoming bigger because of the lockdown. Considering the fact that IKEA of Sweden is a heart of the product development for the IKEA group, to develop a product which can solve the problem of loneliness among people who live apart from family members will appeal to many potential customers in developed countries and IKEA of Sweden will be able to take initiative to increase sales of goods even in this pandemic and further in the future since the problem itself is a long-term trend due to ageing population and the population concentration in urban cities in many developed countries.

Since the delineation of this research project is the research phase and prototype phase, product development for practice and user tests based on the research done by us are

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necessary as a further research topic in order to get the benefit that IKEA of Sweden can take an initiative to increase the sales of goods purely from the perspective of product development.

1.2 Personal Background and Motivation

I am so-called a highly sensitive person who tends to try to read other people's feelings and emotions too much sometimes to the level where I get exhausted with that. Also, I am a thoughtful person who thinks something but tends to decide not to talk about it or act on it because of the possibility that my actions can be offensive to the person I am interacting with even if the possibility is very little. I sometimes do this automatically without noticing it, and of course, there were many cases that my thought was completely wrong. It is very difficult to understand people’s thoughts and feelings since sometimes there is a gap between how you feel and how you act without noticing it, like in my case. Perhaps, there are a lot of people like me. These experiences made me think about how to understand people’s emotions covered by their actions and how to increase positive emotions through a tangible solution that an individual can use in everyday life.

1.3 Aim and Purpose

Loneliness is one of the societal problems affecting many individuals from the young to the elderly. The aim of the research is to understand behaviours, insights and needs among individuals who feel loneliness at home. The purpose is to deliver a solution which can reduce their loneliness and improve their well-being. A connection that even someone’s grandmother can feel a little bit more connected with her children or grandchildren living apart and get extra peace of mind.

The thesis project was carried out by an interdisciplinary team composed of one designer and one engineer but the thesis was written separately focusing on design aspects and engineering aspects respectively. This paper was written by the designer.

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1.4 Delineation of A Field of Study

1.4.1 Changes in Lifestyle

Our lifestyle has been changing along with economic growth. Today, more individuals change the workplace and the place to live. It is getting common that parents, children, grandchildren, and even one’s partner may have physical distances living in another city or country, temporarily or for a long period. Also, we cannot take for granted that we live in big family constellations since modernism has changed that, especially in modern societies such as western European countries, the US and Japan. Nowadays, we need to consider that family is a big concept depending on the circumstance in each individual which includes divorce for example. Hence family reunion is limited to celebrations such as Christmas, New year, funerals or births.

The ratio of people who live alone rarely rose above 10% in any city in post-industrial societies, and this is more critical in bigger cities, for example, in Stockholm, 60% of adults live alone, in Berlin, it is nearly half of the population (DiJulio, Hamel, Muñana and Brodie, 2018). Individuals who live alone tend to feel lonely (see Figure 1) since people who are living with others are 43% more likely to say they do not feel lonely according to a survey (Loneliness - What characteristics and circumstances are associated with feeling lonely? - Office for National Statistics, 2020). In general, loneliness is a common challenge experienced by around 30 million European adults (7%) (How lonely are Europeans? - EU Science Hub - European Commission, 2020), and it can be over 40% of the elderly (Perissinotto, Stijacic Cenzer and Covinsky, 2012).

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Figure 1. Individuals who live alone tend to feel lonely.

1.4.2 Family in Modern Society

Family is considered as a group of individuals in human society, and consanguinity or affinity, such as marriage or other relationships, connect them. Creating a family aims to maintain the well-being of each member and of society (Collins, Jordan and Coleman, 2010).

Traditionally, the term “immediate family” may include spouses, parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters. The word “extended family” might include aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces and siblings-in-law. Sometimes some of the extended family members are also considered the immediate family members. It depends on an individual's particular relationship with them (US Legal, 2020). In modern societies, marriages are no longer related to economic, social or political gain, and there is no longer an expectation in children to contribute to the family income. Instead, love is the main criteria to choose partners. This tendency indicates a societal shift toward promoting emotional fulfilment and relationships within a family, and this shift weakens the traditional system of the family. It means that whether a couple gets married or not is not strongly related to being a family member of others (Coontz, 2005). “Family of choice” refers to the group of people in one's life that fulfils the typical role of the family as a support system, which is getting common

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— We Are Family, 2020). In modern society, families are no longer defined by strict parameters of marriage and parenthood, hence the term “family” can be defined as a group of people connected by love.

1.4.3 Loneliness and Connection

Loneliness is studied by many researchers and can be defined in several different ways. For instance, it can be defined as an uncomfortable feeling when an individual feels lack of close companionship or loss of it (Cattan, Newell, Bond and White, 2003), or it can be defined as a phenomenon where an individual cannot be satisfied with his or her social network since they feel it is smaller or less than they expect (Bevinn, 2011). Loneliness is associated more with quality than the number of relationships. A lonely person tends to feel that their relationships are not meaningful and that others do not understand him or her (Lim, Rodebaugh, Zyphur and Gleeson, 2016). It is a risk factor for several health issues such as depression, negative emotions and death (Warner, Roberts, Jeanblanc and Adams, 2017). Loneliness is basically a lack of connection. Social connection is understood as one of the core needs in humans, one of the most social species. It is an experience of feeling close and connected to others which include feeling loved, cared for and valued, and forms the essential part of interpersonal relationships (Eisenberger and Cole, 2012). It is fundamental to nearly every aspect of health and well-being. There is an individual level of connection, such as family, friends or acquaintances, and larger community level of connection like a society that an individual belongs to (Berkman, Kawachi and Glymour, n.d.). In this thesis, “connection” is defined as an individual level of connection which specifically focuses on family.

1.4.4 Home

Places of residence do not necessarily relate to the concept of home. An emotional and psychological relationship are other aspects which make a certain place home as well as a physical space, for instance, memory, comfort, familiarity and activity are some of the important factors in the structure of the home (Stoneham and Smith, 2020).

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1.4.5 Human Needs

A Chilean Economist Manfred Max-Neef defined a model of human needs which is composed of nine fundamental needs: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity and freedom (see Figure 2). These are constant across historical time periods and can be applied to every human being regardless of race, religion, gender and culture. According to him, what can be changed is ways of meeting needs which are called satisfiers. The satisfiers vary depending on the individual's personality, culture, where they come from etc. Furthermore, specific actions that an individual takes to achieve the satisfiers are also satisfiers. Products and services are not things that directly fulfil needs but means that can help these satisfiers. Each human need is interrelated and interactive (Manfred Max-Neef, 1986).

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Figure 2. Max-Neef's Matrix of Needs and Satisfiers (Romero and Molina, 2020).

1.4.6 Sustainable Development

The Sustainable Development Goals (see Figure 3) are the plan to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all people living in this world. The global challenges we encounter are addressed, such as poverty, inequality, climate change, peace and justice. By 2030, all the 17 goals need to be achieved by us in order to leave nobody behind (Sustainable Development Goals | UNDP, 2020). The definition of sustainable development was proposed by the Brundtland Commission (2020): “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

Figure 3. The Sustainable Development Goals (Sustainable Development Goals | UNDP, 2020).

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One of the goals is about good health and well-being (see Figure 4) as mentioned in the diagram above. Ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being at all ages is essential to sustainable development. It is referring to different aspects of health and well-being including physical and mental health (Goal 3 | Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2020).

Figure 4. Good health and well-being (Goal 3 | Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2020).

1.5 Delineation of The Project

1.5.1 A Better Connection

Loneliness is associated with various mental issues. The fact that individuals, who live alone, tend to feel more lonely than those who live with someone, can be considered as the situation where the needs of affection and identity are not satisfied. In other words, individuals feel less love and belongingness brought by the existence of their family when living apart because of a lack of sufficient and meaningful interactions. Addressing humans’ emotions towards family members who live apart would be increasingly important than ever since nowadays our lifestyle has been changing dramatically. Sometimes, it requires us to keep a long distance from our family in certain periods or temporarily due to work, study or a

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pandemic for example. Someone’s wife might need to work in a different city for one year.

Someone’s grandmother may need to keep a distance from all of her family members due to pandemic that nobody knows when it ends. Now, not everyone is lucky enough to have family members at home to gain enough satisfaction with love and belongingness on a daily basis. Also, it can be said that existing ways of connection with remote family members such as phone calls, text chat, video calls are not working enough in order to solve their loneliness.

Hence there is a need for a better way of connecting with long-distance family, and we see a hope that an individual's home can become a place where a lonely individual can feel emotionally a little bit more connected with their family even though they are living apart, which would lead to a little bit more happiness and positive emotions in the individual. Now, the focus of the project is to design an alternative solution that can make the lonely individuals feel more connected to a remote family. In order to do that, we explore what factors are needed in the existing condition of connection between remote family members.

The outcome in the form of service or product has a possibility to emotionally reconnect long-distance family and improve mental health and well-being among people, who live alone and feel loneliness, which is linked to a more sustainable society in the long run.

1.5.2 IKEA

This research has another aspect that two students from Linnaeus University aim to develop a solution as a product for IKEA of Sweden with tutoring by them throughout the process. Its vision is “to create a better everyday life for the many people” (The story of IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad, 2020).

Uncertainty. This word might be very precise to explain 2020 that all of us in the world went through. Indeed, IKEA got a negative impact from this. Approximately 350 stores needed to shut down for 7 months on average and the sales of goods has decreased compared to last year (Inter IKEA Group financial reports, 2021). If we focus on people’s lives, the physical distance between individuals is getting bigger and bigger because of lockdown. In general, people who live alone tend to feel more lonely than others who live with family members according to a study. The ratio of individuals who live alone is 60% in Stockholm and 50% in Berlin, and it is easily predicted that this uncertain pandemic makes this problem even worse.

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So, many people are feeling lonely at home. But what is home? Home is basically where you make memories, feel secure with its familiarity and feel comfortable with your loved ones.

Lonely individuals, who live alone, are not getting these feelings. This shows that the available ways of connection between remote family members are not enough. Going back to IKEA’s problem, IKEA needs to solve the problem that the sales of goods decrease in this kind of condition. Indeed, many tactics have already been implemented as the IKEA group but IKEA of Sweden is a heart of product development. Is there anything that can be done purely from the perspective of product development? Now, we would like to propose that the IKEA of Sweden can focus on the problem of loneliness at home. Also, although this problem is getting more clear because of the pandemic, this is a long-term trend in many developed countries partly due to an ageing population, partly due to the problem of the population concentration in bigger cities and it is predicted that the importance will increase in the future as well as in the emergency situation like a pandemic.

IKEA of Sweden can go back to five democratic design principles composed of form, function, sustainability, quality and low price, and look at the term “form” a bit more carefully. The senior designer at IKEA of Sweden Sarah Fager mentioned that “The form is for beauty, it’s what attracts the eye” (Democratic Design. Making great design available to everyone., 2021). We want to dig into her quotes a little bit more deeply. What is beauty?

When would you feel beautiful about something? Individuals probably feel beautiful about something because you got emotionally moved or attracted to that. The form is for beauty.

The term “form” can be grasped as “how the product feels like” and the whole user experience through a product which changes user’s emotions can also be included as well as other elements such as shape and colour which make the user feel emotionally more attracted to a product by seeing it.

In this case, if IKEA of Sweden focuses loneliness at home as an emotion, and develop a product that can increase positive emotions through the experience which makes a lonely individual feel a little bit more connected to long-distance family in everyday life, it will appeal to many customers in developed countries and that IKEA of Sweden can take initiative to increase sales of goods even in this pandemic and further in the future.

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1.5.3 Interdisciplinary Approach

One of the requirements of the thesis made in collaboration with IKEA of Sweden is that the project should be run by an interdisciplinary team composed of diverse members from at least two different disciplines among business, engineering and design. Thus, the project has been done by one designer and one engineer who study in Innovation through Business, Engineering and Design, a cross-disciplinary master programme at Linnaeus University. The two members have specifically been learning how to work effectively in a setting to deal with complex problems and reach sustainable solutions in the programme. In that way, the team members are eligible for the collaboration. In the project, the responsibility for design is to explore what types of interaction and experience lonely individuals who live alone need in the remote connection with their family members in order to reduce loneliness. The responsibility for engineering is to examine how to establish the system which can cater the interaction and experience into reality. The perspective of business is discussed with IKEA in the latter part of the project.

1.6 Research Question

What can design do to create a better connection between long-distance family members to reduce loneliness among individuals who live alone?

- What is the condition about available ways of connection between remote family members?

- How can the needs of all family members be satisfied to reduce loneliness among the lonely individuals?

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2. Theoretical and Methodological Framework

2.1 Theoretical Framework

Several theories were used to guide the direction of the product development done in the thesis project.

2.1.1 Interdisciplinarity

Knowledge is traditionally fragmented in different disciplines in educational and professional contexts, but the complex challenges that the world currently faces often can not be solved by only one discipline. Interdisciplinarity can be useful for a better understanding of the complicated challenges (Eagan, Cook and Joeres, 2002). A problem can lay down in several different areas. Integrating disciplines enables researchers to see each different part that comprises a certain problem and foster better solutions. It enables “mutual development of the distinctive areas of expertise which different subjects may have to offer”.

Interdisciplinarity can also be helpful to enhance sustainable development (Summers, Childs and Corney, 2005).

Several researchers advocated the definition of interdisciplinarity, and one of them is “to integrate knowledge and modes of thinking drawn from two or more disciplines to produce a cognitive advancement – for example, explaining a phenomenon, solving a problem, creating a product, or raising a new question – in ways that would have been unlikely through single disciplinary means” (Mansilla, 2005). Gustafsson and Kans (2020) concluded from several literature reviews that “interdisciplinarity could be seen as the integration of disciplines as a means to create deepened knowledge of a problem”. Interdisciplinarity can be helpful to enhance sustainable development when there are coordination and coherence across subjects, but there are few good records of success by interdisciplinary initiatives. It is recommended that integration should be started with two or three disciplines (Summers, Childs and Corney, 2005).

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In any kind of projects, there are several requirements that project members need to follow, and they are crucial to building a framework to be able to evaluate if the idea satisfies the requirements. The requirement can be more understandable with three conditions for successful ideas: 1) feasibility: if the solution is technically feasible now or in the near future, 2) viability: if it becomes part of a sustainable business model, 3) desirability: if the solution is what target users really want (see Figure 5). It is important to make a balance between these three conditions, but these do not have to be perfectly even, rather a good balance should be explored depending on available technologies, budget, human factors etc. which belong to each project and company (Brown, 2010).

Figure 5. Feasibility, viability and desirability (Brown, 2009).

2.1.2 Human-centred Design

The industrialisation has brought about incredible changes in society. Thanks to technological development, millions of people emerged from poverty, and life standard among human-being has been improved as a whole. However, more and more people started realising the negative aspect of it. Since the industrialisation has started, global rising

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temperatures have occurred resulting in climate change. Affordable products produced in manufacturing plants and factories have carried cultures of mass consumption and even just wasting money in several rich developed countries. Previous innovation has become a formula and many companies are stuck in the negative spiral of commoditization. As a result, more and more individuals, who are already satisfied with tangible things such as reliable functionality and a certain level of package design, started seeking meaningful experiences which can emotionally satisfy them in the context of post-industrial societies. Yet, technological development knows no bounds. Now, capturing innovation only from a perspective of technology is getting more unsustainable than ever from ecological, social and economic perspectives, and thus, an alternative approach is necessary towards innovation.

Design thinking can be beneficial to offer a new approach (Brown, 2010). Even though the approach is not a perfect prescription to any kind of problem-solving (Jon Kolko » The Divisiveness of Design Thinking, 2020), it is associated with enhancing innovation of products or services in many business and social contexts (Dorst, 2012). Design thinking is not driven by technology but by human-being. Innovation does not only mean launching new tangible products, but also new types of processes, service, interaction, entertainment, communication and collaboration, which are human-centred challenges (Brown, 2009).

2.1.3 Well-being

What condition makes an individual feel satisfied? There are two different types of happiness: status type of happiness and non-status of happiness. The status of happiness is what an individual can feel when the desire for earning money, material or fame is satisfied, for instance, when he or she earns more money, gains more tangible things or a higher social position. Human beings tend to pursue this happiness in a period of high economic growth.

On the other hand, the non-status of happiness is becoming more important in many developed countries. It is a concept that self-fulfilment, growth, connection, individuality such as an individual's sense of value, emotions and lifestyle are linked to each person’s sense of well-being (Maeno, 2013).

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2.1.4 Loneliness

Sadler and Weiss (1975) advocated two types of loneliness: one is social loneliness and another is emotional loneliness. Individuals experience social loneliness when they do not feel there is enough social network. It is a subjective feeling and but in most cases, it is a situation when they do not feel like they are in a certain community, or they have friends whom they can rely on when they need help (Shaʻked and Rokach, 2015). Emotional loneliness comes from a lack of intimate relationships with other people. As a human need, people have a need for deep attachments, which can be fulfilled mainly by close family members such as parents or by romantic partners depending on one’s life stage (Sadler and Weiss, 1975).

According to a study, emotional loneliness drastically increased the potential of death for older adults living alone while there is no correlation between mortality ratio and social isolation in the elderly (O ʼSúilleabháin, Gallagher and Steptoe, 2019). The satisfaction for the need of emotional loneliness cannot be replaced with the satisfaction for the need of social loneliness (see Figure 6), and vice versa (Sadler and Weiss, 1975). It shows that there is a necessity of an appropriate approach to deal with each emotional loneliness and social loneliness, otherwise, it cannot be addressed well.

Emotional loneliness can be separated into family loneliness and romantic loneliness, which was described by DiTommaso and Spinner (1997). Family loneliness occurs when a person does not feel they have close ties with family members. There is an increased frequency of self-harm when a student has family loneliness (Lasgaard et al., 2011). Romantic loneliness can happen in students and adults who feel a lack of close tie with a romantic partner (Elmien, Rozanne, Watt and Alberta, 2016), and it can cause mental problems at least in students (Larson, 1999).

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Figure 6. The satisfaction for the need for emotional and social loneliness cannot be replaced with each other.

2.1.5 Design for Older Adults

Ageing is a continuous process in one’s life span and it results in a variety of impairment in body functions, increased daily life challenges at some points in one’s life (Kirkwood, 2008).

There is significant diversity in how each individual experiences these changes (Sehl and Yates, 2001). In a book “Designing for Older Adults: Principles and Creative Human Factors Approaches”, Czaja, Boot, Charness and Rogers (2019) summarised a perceptional, cognitional and movement control factors that should be understood to design a product or service which can be used by older people.

Perception

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- Possibility of a slight change in taste and smell.

- Changes in kinesthetic sensitivity which is linked to the difficulty to control body position or movement resulting in falls.

- Auditory gradually declines over ageing, and high-frequency sounds can be more problematic than low-frequency ones.

- A decline in vision which can affect depth perception and sensitivity of glare. Also, an ability to adapt to darkness becomes slow, the visual field is reduced, the speed of visual processing is slowed (Czaja, Boot, Charness and Rogers, 2019).

Cognition

- Decline in working memory (also called short-term memory) while semantic memory (also called long-term memory) does not decline through ageing.

- Prospective memory (to remember to do something in the future) declines.

Time-based task (to take a pill in 1 hour) can be more difficult than an event-based task (to take a pill when the alarm rings).

- A decline in selective visual attention (find the right button to press among many buttons on an automated machine) and dynamic visual attention (focus one location and then another location). Cues for orientation can be helpful for them to capture their attention.

- A decline in Spatial cognition (translate information in a 3-dimensional image to one in a 2-dimensional one)

- Language comprehension can be maintained as long as the used words are in his or her long-term memory. However, overloaded short-term memory, which can happen when inferences are required, is linked to impairment of language comprehension.

- Well-learned procedural knowledge (to do something without thought, for example, balancing on a bicycle) is maintained. It can be difficult to develop new automatic processes or new habits depending on the task.

- Complex tasks increase the difficulty to process information quickly.

- A decline in multiple tasks (Czaja, Boot, Charness and Rogers, 2019).

Movement control

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- Response time can be more slowly (between one and a half and two times longer than a younger adult does).

- Movements tend to be less precise and more unstable (Czaja, Boot, Charness and Rogers, 2019).

2.1.6 Affordance

It is a coined word named after “afford” advocated by American psychologist Gibson and CARMICHAEL (1968). Its concept is that form, colour and material that a certain thing has been explaining how to use it. In other words, users can understand how to use it by recognising these elements of products or services.

2.1.7 Democratic Design

It is a tool to develop and evaluate the products at IKEA to put into their range composed of five pillars: form, function, quality, sustainability and low price. A product is considered as democratic when it is balanced between all five and the weight of each factor to achieve the balance is depending on the product. The senior designer Sarah Fager has mentioned that

“The form is for beauty, it’s what attracts the eye”. Being functional refers to the condition where a product can be used for many people. A quality product means that the style and the material of the product can last over time. Sustainability means ethics around products. It is about taking responsibility all the way through a product life cycle being aware of where each resource comes from, how ethical the way people produce products and using exactly the appropriate resources effectively and sparingly (Democratic Design. Making great design available to everyone., 2021).

2.2 Methodological Framework

Design thinking was used to guide the process of the product development. It is a process for innovation from a human-centred perspective and it is a system of a five-stage process composed of 1) empathise, 2) define, 3) ideate, 4) prototype and 5) test (see Figure 7). Teams

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often run them in parallel, out of order and might go back and forth through these phases while project members improve ideas or explore new directions (Get Started with Design Thinking — Stanford d.school, 2020).

Figure 7. Design Thinking (The design thinking process for better UX design, 2019).

Basically, the characteristic of the initial phase of the design thinking based on the human-centred design process is to empathise the target users through observations and analysis and define its pain points. However, the current pandemic made this phase difficult to complete, thus some other theories were also used to support the results of the empathy phase and problem definition phase. Some of the core mindset, way of thinking and processes of the design thinking were described below.

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Empathy:

Building empathy with clients, users or customers is fundamental. Designers should think about how to approach possible users in order to understand their wants and needs, what would make their life more convenient, more enjoyable, and how to deal with current technological limitations and business requirements to achieve their core desire (Kelley and Kelley, 2015). Interviews or behaviour observation, or both can be helpful to gain insights depending on situation and circumstance. Observation can include several different ways:

ergonomics, ethnography, environmental psychology, social psychology and facial expression analysis etc. It is crucial to relate to the contents gained from any methods as if it were my own, through listening to it and seeing it with a curious and honest mind (Brown, 2010). The importance of having empathy is related to the fact that it can include not only understanding physical ergonomics but also understanding psychological and emotional needs, for example, to consider why and how they might think and feel about certain situations, and what would be meaningful to them (Kelley and Kelley, 2015). Unclear actions of each individual at a glance might be a strategy to address the troublesome, complex and contradictory world for each of them (Brown, 2010).

Divergent and Convergent Thinking:

The whole design thinking process is characterised by double diamonds which means going back and forth between divergent thinking and convergent thinking (see Figure 8). The aim of divergent thinking is to create as many options as possible, and it is also useful to consider various ways to create visions or interactive experiences for new services. These typically can be done with some different methods such as literature review, interview and brainstorming sessions. Convergent thinking, on the other hand, can be practical in case of selecting ideas out of existing many options. After choosing and sorting many ideas, pattern finding and synthesis, which allows researchers to connect parts and create whole ideas or find meaningful patterns that can lead to solutions or opportunities for change (Brown, 2010).

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Figure 8. Divergent and convergent thinking (Circular Economy Asia | Implementing the Circular Economy, 2020).

Prototyping:

Prototyping is regarded as a core in the space of implementation. The prototype includes even a rough mock-up in the initial stage of projects, not only finished models right before its launch. It is recommended to conduct user tests using prototypes again and again. The faster project members make prototypes from ideas, the more suitable the solutions could be since it can be helpful to gather feedback from team members and other stakeholders, and possibly improve the idea since the beginning of the projects. One of the factors which could be helpful for this iterative prototyping process is that companies or any organisations which are responsible for the project should be creative, meaning that they should have a truly open-minded attitude and tolerance towards experimentation in the process of the project done by the project team (Brown, 2009).

2.2.1 Methods to Empathise

In-depth Interview

Interviews enable a researcher to understand the respondent's experience, opinions, thoughts and perception towards a certain thing (Martin & Hanington, 2012). The researcher can

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obtain deeper insights since they have an opportunity to dig deep into the respondent’s answers (Boeijen and Daalhuizen, 2010). The developer can use this method in both an initial phase of product development and the phase of concept verification. In the initial phase in the process, the group can gain context information, such as opinions regarding an existing product or service. In contrast, if the team uses it in order to get detailed feedback from users in the verification phase, it would be useful to improve the product or service and refine the concept. The interview may not be suitable only for a project where the concept of the upcoming service or product is entirely new (Boeijen and Daalhuizen, 2010).

The researchers conducted several in-depth interviews in order to grasp respondents’ position towards loneliness, their thoughts and behaviours in relation to emotional loneliness and communication with their family and partner.

2.2.2 Methods to Define

Qualitative Data Analysis

Qualitative analysis is more associated with meaning. The data from the interview is describing valid information which can help a researcher answer his/her research question(s).

In order to analyse data from individual interviews, the components include: 1) organizing the data 2) finding and organizing ideas and concepts 3) building overarching themes in the data 4) ensuring reliability and validity in the data analysis and in the findings 5) finding possible and plausible explanations for findings 6) an overview of the final steps (Gibson &

O'Connor, 2020).

The qualitative data analysis was conducted by the team in order to understand insights and needs among people who have emotional loneliness. The researchers followed the components described above for the analysis based on the outcome of the conducted interviews which express the behaviours and thoughts about current ways of connection with family or partner in respondents and their family members.

Stakeholders Map

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Stakeholders map is a document which communicates which stakeholders make a design project established by illustration. It is useful as a basis of user-centred research and design. It can act as a guide in order to collaborate with various stakeholders precisely through the whole process of the project. The map made as a tentative plan in the early stage needs to be revised in parallel with that the project proceeds, and how each stakeholder works and relationship with each other become more clear.

The stakeholders map was created after the interview analysis where the researcher had a better understanding of the possible target group.

2.2.3 Methods to Ideate

Brainstorming

Boeijen and Daalhuizen (2010) mention that this method is composed of a rule to come up with a large number of ideas and its steps. It is based on the thought that “quantity creates quality”. A team can make the most of this methodology when they use it for ideation. One of the specific features of this method is that nobody should criticise others’ ideas in the session, not to think about usability, applicability and feasibility. Any crazy idea is welcome. Graphic organiser, such as brainstorming web, tree chart and flow chart can be used as a framework to make the contents of the brainstorming session easier to grasp through visualisation.

This method was used to come up with as many ideas as possible based on the insights that the researchers gathered from the interviews.

Concept Selection

Ulrich. Karl T., Eppinger and Yang. Maria C (2020) described in the book “Product Design and Development” that the primary purpose of this method is to help a team member to choose the central concept through identifying customer needs and comparing the pros and cons of each concept. There are six steps in the process of selection: 1) Preparing the selection matrix 2) Rating the concepts 3) Ranking the concepts 4) Combining and improving the concepts 5) Selecting one or a few among them 6) Reflecting on the outcome carefully in order to avoid any mistake or misunderstanding.

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It was useful to narrow down the potential concepts in a structured way and select the best one out of many ideas after the brainstorming session. It was conducted with twenty people including researchers.

Benchmarking

Ceric, D'Alessandro, Soutar and Johnson (2016) explain that this method is a tool for the evaluation and assessment of competitors in a specific market where the project is related.

This method is beneficial to understand to what extent a current project or business model is competitive within a market by comparing a current project with a standard or the best practice. Usually, the project members drive a certain change based on the outcome and improve the quality of the project.

This was used to understand potential positions of the final concept which have not yet been satisfied by users so that the researchers can make sure if it can be outstanding in the industry.

2.2.4 Methods to Prototype

Prototyping

Prototyping is a tangible trial piece which enables team members to communicate, develop and test ideas with other team members, clients or users depending on its fidelity. Prototypes can be classified based on its fidelity towards a finished product. A low-fidelity prototype can be beneficial typically for ideation at the beginning of the project in any kind of area taking a role as a concept sketch, storyboard or simple model. The aim of this kind of prototype is to check the effectiveness in order to start developing the idea within the team. It can also be helpful as a tool to show an initial idea to clients or users to test it. A high-fidelity prototype is usually equipped with the look and feel of the finished products, and its basic functionality in some cases. This prototype is used for evaluation and testing at the end of the project, and the project team can gain feedback from clients regarding aesthetic, form, interaction and usability of the product (Martin & Hanington, 2012).

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In this project, the design drawing, simple model, storyboard for the video visualisation and video itself were considered as prototyping.

Design Drawing

Design sketches can be useful to ideate concepts, to consider the form and colour of a certain concept and to communicate the concept to stakeholders in the process of decision making.

Usually, it is preferable to use hand-drawn sketches for idea generation and evaluation since it looks more modifiable for better ideas. CAD rendering is more effective than hand-drawn one when it comes to communicating ideas to stakeholders in a presentation since it looks more attractive (Boeijen and Daalhuizen, 2014).

This was beneficial when the researcher wanted to communicate the many ideas from the brainstorming session to the participants who took part in the concept selection process where the selection was done online. Also, it was useful for the researchers to explore possible shapes of the final product.

Video Visualisation

It enables researchers to visualise future scenarios or experiences which express how a new concept, which is not yet available, could be used or how it can affect individuals’ daily lives.

It will not only convey the tangible parts of the concept but also express the intangible parts, for instance, people’s emotions (Boeijen and Daalhuizen, 2010).

A short video has been created to describe how possible users will experience the final concept in real life. Also, an infographics animation was made to explain how the system in the product should work to achieve the user experience respectively. These were also helpful to analyse the possible user experience to make it better.

Risk Analysis

As Antvik and Sjöholm (2012) mentioned, it is crucial to assess the uncertainties related to a project. There are two criteria that need to be considered: one is a probability of something that can happen, another is how impactful the incident can be. These should be analysed one by one and ranked on a scale from one to five and multiplied to make a risk value which is

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between one to twenty-five. No action is required when the score is from one to four, an investigation is required when it is from five to ten, and immediate investigation is required when it is eleven to twenty-five since it is seen as a direct threat to the project.

The risk analysis has been used once the final concept was established to analyse its potential threads for the actual implementation process.

2.3 Empirical Findings from Research Methods

2.3.1 Empathise

In-depth interviews and analysis were conducted in this phase. The interviews were done in the condition of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, some of the interviews were done in person while others were via online using video call since several respondents were not comfortable with meeting in person in the condition. The researcher interviewed eight people since around ten qualitative interviews can provide eighty percent of user needs according to studies (Boeijen and Daalhuizen, 2014). The respondents were international students who live alone in Sweden and a few individuals who work in Sweden living with their family from different cultural backgrounds such as Sweden, China, Croatia, Romania, Japan, Bangladesh and Zambia in order to understand different perspectives towards loneliness among family and observe cultural differences. The interview itself was composed of six basic open-questions (see Table 1), which allowed the interviewees to tell their stories regarding their experiences towards the topic, and the researcher asked more questions depending on the direction of the conversation. Each interview took approximately fifteen minutes to one and a half hour depending on each person's answer and their motivation. All the processes were recorded and transcripted (See appendix 1).

Have you ever felt lonely in your daily life? In what kind of situation do you experience loneliness?

When you are feeling lonely, what do you think is missing in your daily life?

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Table 1. Fundamental interview questions.

After the interview and transcription, all the data were systematically organised and arranged in one location, and words and phrases used frequently in the interviews were identified.

Then, these words and phrases were organised into categories/codes which explain what a respondent means (See Figure 9 and Appendix 1). Through this process, the researchers have explored an interviewee's perceptions, attitudes, and feelings towards the topic by being fully aware of how they select words, how they express themselves, and how they tell their stories.

Also, we were very careful about the fact that what they say they want is sometimes not what they really want.

If you can meet anyone in this world right now, who are the few people you want to meet when you are feeling lonely?

What if you cannot meet the person for a certain time, you might text, talk on the phone or video call with them. Is there any difference between meeting the individual in person and meeting digitally using these existing communication tools? What are the things you cannot do/feel/perceive when meeting digitally compared to meeting in person?

Are (Were) you close to your grandparents? How do (did) you communicate with them when you are living apart from them? (skype or any kind of tools?) How often do (did) you meet with them in person?

When you get old in the future, maybe in 40 years, what if you have children and even grandchildren, but they are living apart, what kind of communication you would like to have with them if technologically anything is possible?

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Figure 9. An example of the documentation.

2.3.2 Define

As a next step, the several different categories, which have a similar meaning, were collapsed and eight main overarching insights/possible user needs have emerged: A) More interactive companionship B) Long-lasting effects C) Limitation D) Non-verbal information E) Tactility F) Mobility G) Inclusivity H) Effectiveness and simplicity (see Table 2). Hence, these are the possible essences which would make a long-distance family relationship more meaningful when they are far apart.

Insights Associated codes

A. More interactive companionship Lack of shared space for interactive communication / Lack of feeling of

companionship / Need of live feedback / Lack

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of shared experience / Lack of shared memories B. Long-lasting effects Need of lasting effect of communication / Need

of feeling of presence / Lack of togetherness, Need of lasting effect in terms of feeling / The feeling of disconnection from close people like family

C. Limitation Concern over the wellbeing of others / Lack of subjective flexibility in the time of video call / Hesitation to share deep feelings to family D. Non-verbal information Lack of detailed information to read emotions /

Appreciation of non-verbal communication

E. Tactility Lack of physical intimacy / Lack of touch feeling / Necessity of physical contact

F. Mobile connection Lack of flexibility of the technology

G. Inclusive connection The generation gap in using technology and processing complex things / Ease of

accessibility of different technology / Difficulty of using high-tech devices from older adults’

perspective / Concern about a gap in topics to share between young and older adults / Lack of affordance for new technology from older adults perspective / Lack of interest towards new technology from older adults’ perspective / Lack of flexibility in the timing of

communication depending on lifestyle / Lack of accessibility for people who have hearing problems / Concern about lack of common topics to share in a conversation

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Table 2. Interview coding results.

Each possible insight from the interviews was introduced in more detail with several significant quotes below. How families and couples are struggling to create meaningful connections, so-called pain points can be seen.

A. More Interactive companionship

Individuals can feel a lack of space for doing something together while they are connecting with their family in available tools such as text chat, phone call, video chat. Apparently, individuals want to do something together with them not only because it is fun, but also creating memories together makes the relationship more meaningful for them. One of the interviewees, who feel lonely living alone, expressed that,

“I feel happy when I am doing something together (with my mother). I want to cook something together with her because cooking is mutual interest (between us). (...) Basically, I feel much closer to my mother when doing a video call compared to texting, but I just cannot do something together with her during the video call. (...) A lack of space or atmosphere to share between my mother and me, something happy or sweet”

H. Effectiveness and simplicity The gap in the motivation of to what extent each person want to communicate to feel close / Lack of emotional bonding between generations from younger people’s perspective / Concern about bothering younger family member’s everyday life / Lack of interest to invest time and effort for communication with older adults from younger perspective / Need of frequent

communication with younger family members without bothering their daily life too much / The difference in timezone

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One of the interviewees who live with her husband explains her frustration about living apart from her close brother, which goes like,

“If I phone him, I can hear his stories but if I can meet him in person, I can do something with him… we can play games, we can go to places together… you can share the same experience”

B. Long-lasting effects

Individuals can feel sad or void after they have finished connecting through rich types of ways in terms of the amount of information to exchange. We can assume that it would be partly because of the gap between when individuals are connecting to their important people in a very rich way and when it is finished coming back to his or her reality separated from his or her significant people. Individuals may want to sense the presence of someone they love and a sense that they are living in the same world as the one the individual lives in their daily life. A person, who feels lonely living alone, from the interview expresses his own complex feelings while talking about an imaginal device which can create warmth or sense of touch of his remote family members.

“I feel like an artificial way to create warmth or feeling can be a double-edged sword. As it can make me feel like missing my family even more.”

One of the other interviewees lives alone and tends to feel sad due to lack of sense of connection with her boyfriend. She describes a phone call as a way that can bother daily life of a certain type of individual, who does not need to feel connected with their family as much as others and cannot last for a long period, which makes her feel sad.

“I also feel like a phone call would disappear even though we decided to do that on a certain time on a daily basis… because it can become a bother... but... when you don’t talk about anything on the phone, there is no meaning to do a phone call right?”

C. Limitation

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Individuals can hesitate to connect with their family when they are feeling lonely, sad, feeling down. One of the participants explains that she doesn't want her mother to be worried about her especially when there is a physical distance between her mother and her. When she is feeling down, she tends to choose tools which exchange less information, for instance, text chat, not video call, so that she can hide her sad feelings from her mother. she feels like she should be in a good mood when it comes to starting a video call with her mother.

“I don’t want to share my sadness with my mother because I don’t want her to be worried about me. (...) I prefer texting each other when I am in a bad mood so that she cannot notice my sad mood with my voice”

A guy from the interview seemed to be reluctant to actively share the fact that he is missing his mother while studying abroad and want his mother to somehow realise it even though it is online interaction.

“Mother can understand her children. A mother understands when the child needs hugs. A device can be programmed in a way that it can send messages about what her children want or maybe missing her”

D. Non-verbal information

It can be difficult to sense negative feelings of people on the other side through text chat, phone call or video chat because individuals tend not to express negative feelings in such verbal ways with long distance. One of the participants was struggling to feel connected with a long-distance with her boyfriend who does not express himself in a verbal way that much through online tools, and says that this condition makes her difficult to think about how to support him as a girlfriend in general.

“It is difficult to read the atmosphere in the digital world. When you ask someone in the text

‘How are you?’ and most of the people say ‘I’m good’ but you don’t know which type of ‘I’m good’. And usually, you don’t mention your negative feelings in the text that much”

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Individuals can prefer to have a sense of touch with their family even though there is a distance. An interviewee used to have a long-distance relationship due to her studying abroad, and has expressed how important a sense of touch could be for her during the long-distance relationship.

“Because of this distance, physical touch started becoming something very important to me. I realized every time I was meeting with my boyfriend, I couldn’t stop touching him… like I felt a need, a hunger for it. I just need to touch him. I am not sure this is the case if we are always together, but in distance, that was an important thing”

F. Mobility

It can be boring to keep sitting down in front of a laptop or holding their smartphone during a phone call or video call with their family. One of the interviewees showed her frustration about the inconvenience of a phone call and a video call.

“If you have a video call, you are kind of stuck. You can’t move around… and if you have a phone, you have to hold your phone all the time”

G. Inclusivity

It can be difficult to use a smartphone, a computer and an iPad for older adults.

“They are like ninety years old and they don’t use cell phones or other high-tech things even though they have them… but they are not good at using them”

An interviewee talked about her grandmother and her behaviour in relation to a phone call.

Her grandmother is still following her behaviour that she used to do a long time ago. This shows that adapting to a completely new way of connection can be more difficult for older adults than younger people expect. Affordance, something that they can relate to from their past experiences might be key here.

“She still talks very short on the phone...she would speak for a few minutes, not let you speak or something…like “Hey, how are you?” and not let you answer, and she was ready to shut

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out the phone call. And I asked her once why she is doing this and she said that when they were young, each in pause, which was one minute, costed money so they were used to calling someone and then calling less than one minute so that they don’t get the next in pause pay...it was expensive at that time, that’s why it matters so much. They were used to just say “Hey how are you, I’m good and bla bla bla and then close the phone and she is still doing this”

When the researcher asked a participant if her grandmother struggles to use her phone, she explained how hard it could be for her grandmother. Even a simple process of phone calling on a smartphone from a younger perspective could be very tricky from an older adult perspective.

“She still has difficulty in just calling. I can imagine my father put something on speed dialogue to have very little few steps to go but still, it’s difficult for her, and every time we call each other, which is very rare, she is saying “okay, let me close” “Let me try to find a button to…” which means tapping once on the screen so that you can see all the buttons. She is eighty now”

She also mentioned that her grandmother has two phones, one is with a camera and another is without a camera. She prefers to use one without a camera, which shows that older adults can prefer affordance over the richness of communication in terms of the amount of information to exchange.

“She is still calling me on the other phone which is not with the camera...yeah she keeps choosing that phone for communication”

Furthermore, another aspect of the inclusivity to be considered is that there is a generation gap in terms of topics to talk about, which could make cross-generation conversation difficult. One of the interviewees concerns her future as a grandmother when it comes to talking on the phone with her future grandchildren.

Table of Contents

Abstract

Keywords

Acknowledgements