Senior Social:

A Program for the Young at Heart

Project Summary

As a Design Consultant for The Guild Theatre, a not-for-profit organization based in Menlo Park, CA, I worked on a team of 4 to create a program aimed to help combat elderly loneliness. The Guild Senior Social would open the venue as a community space for nearby senior homes to gather and socialize.

Overall, the Senior Social received many rounds of feedback culminating in a final presentation to The Guild Theatre. From this project, I gained experience with project management, finding an audience and a need, and knowing when to shift focus.

Project Management | UX Design | Needfinding | Design Consulting | Marketing

Project Details

Role: Design Consultant

Duration: October - December 2023

Company: View here

Tools: Figma, Canva, iMovie

Challenge

Use human-centered design methods to reimagine how The Guild Theatre becomes a vibrant and central pillar of the community, known for giving back and doing good.

Action

Needfinding

Through interviews with The Guild Theatre’s team, we found two main areas of improvement:

  1. Community Presence: The Guild wants to establish their presence within the Menlo Park and Palo Alto community, as well as the broader Bay Area community. The Guild Theatre's 500 person venue focuses on bringing smaller entertainment acts to the northern Bay area. As a 501(c)(3), the Guild is able to provide an affordable venue space to both the surrounding community and up and coming artists.

  2. Audience Retention: The Guild was interested in attracting a younger demographic and overall increasing audience retention. As Stanford students, my Design Consultant team provided a firsthand perspective to attracting a younger audience. For overall audience retention, we were encouraged to look within the community to find other demographics that could be applied to The Guild Theatre.

To understand the needs of The Guild Theatre, we interviewed entertainment and arts communities on Stanford campus that were underrepresented and potential Guild audience members. We initially interviewed six student groups, all with varying experiences in different student and professional organizations. We identified 3 main needs from our conversations with potential users.

User Research

  • Transportation & Marketing

    Greek organizations have used The Guild Theatre as a venue in the past with mixed results, creating a challenging reputation for The Guild. The biggest issue with hosting events at The Guild is transportation to and from the venue from campus and marketing of the event to current students.

  • Leverage Nonprofit Identity

    As a not-for-profit venue, The Guild Theatre had a notion that their involvement may be limited in what events they can host. However, we reframed this as an opportunity after interviewing Frost Amphitheater, a non-profit organization that brings in huge headliners through their audience and donors.

  • Performance Opportunity

    For student dance organizations, they rarely have the chance to perform off-campus. When they do, they have to travel upwards of 2 hours to arrive at their competition. The Guild has hosted student bands in the past, and many current bands would love the opportunity to perform at a professional venue like The Guild.

Synthesizing & Ideating

Based on our user research, we decided to focus on dance organizations as their needs were not being met by any professional venues in the surrounding area. There was potential for The Guild Theatre to introduce these student dance groups in their space as well as broaden their scope. We contacted a variety of dance organizations, both on and off-campus, to try and learn more about how we could co-design solutions at The Guild with them. We also made initial prototypes of marketing materials for a dance event featuring different dance styles such as ballet, hip-hop, and contemporary.

Shifting Focus

Through more user research, we found that on-campus dance groups have little incentive to perform off-campus, highlighting one of the initial insights from users that transportation is critical issue. Many groups only perform off-campus for cultural showcases or monetary incentives. The Guild Theatre's physical space is also not well-suited for dance shows, as there is only one entrance on stage, which is less compatible for ongoing shows that require blocking and transitions between sets. Dance groups also need places to practice beforehand, which The Guild does not have. Additionally, rapid prototyping the dance event would be not feasible given time constraints due to student groups needing ample notice to perform.

We were constrained by time and resources, thus we decided to shift focus to stil address the design challenge and needs of The Guild Theatre, but in an atypical approach.

More User Research

We conducted user research to understand the senior demographic target audience. 98% of elders actively listened to music at least once a month. A core part of Menlo Park and Palo Alto's residents are aged 65+, almost 1/5. There are also at least 4 senior homes within a 2 mile radius of the Guild Theatre.

To reaffirm our findings, we also collected data from surveys conducted by the National Institutes of Health. The NIH found that 35% of adults aged 50-80 reported feeling socially isolated, a lack of companionship, and infrequent contact with those outside of their home. Loneliness affected 40% of senior home residents.

Prototyping

  • 1. First Prototype

    Our first prototype included our intended location for the Stanford Social, addressing the senior community as "the young at heart." This phrasing was received well, thus is incorporated in later prototypes.

  • 2. Second Prototype

    The next revision of our prototype branded the event as more mature, with a black and gold color scheme. The title, "Golden Grooves" aimed to brand the event away from an elderly persona and a fun, engaging event with a senior audience.

  • 3. Final Prototype

    The final prototype used a vibrant color scheme with scrapbook letters, creating a youthful feel for the "Forever Young Club" while keeping the same event descriptions and elements

Result

We publicized our event through social medial channels like Nextdoor, getting positive feedback from communities in the area. The day of, no one came to the event. This was an unexpected result given the positive reception we had received, However, our concept and proposal was still well-received. Currently, The Guild Theatre is in communication with 4 local senior homes. Our team has high hopes for a future event at the Guild similar to the "Forever Young Club" where the young at heart are able to combat their chronic loneliness. Below are some insights we received from our project proposal:

"When you design, you want to show the process. This is clearly what you did here. Showing unexpected outcomes is important when you design, it's part of your storytelling." - David Kelley, Stanford Professor

“I appreciate the different way you took your project. We say many groups focus on a younger age group, but you went the complete opposite [way]. With our current attendee demographic, I feel like we would be able to market easily to a group for an event like this. I want to put this event on myself just to see how successful it can be.” - Tom Bailey, General Manager