We then tried to approach the elders we got to talk to some and got no answer from others. We realized that we were not part of their social life; maybe too young or too many (a gang?), asking the wrong questions? We were strangers and not all of them would take time to speak to us, some even turned around. It was frustrating at times, and members of our team even tried to get hold of their own parents and grandparents to get better insights.

At this point we would like to introduce you to our key interviewees; Paul and Inga on vacation in Norway from Germany, Eivind the owner of Telering Forhandler - a telecommunication store - and a lovely senior lady, we will call her Elise.

 

Paul and Inge were eating ice cream when we approached them, enjoying life to its fullest obviously. Paul has two mobile phones, an older personal phone and a modern one that belongs to his company but as he described it: “I just need that phone to send business emails to my customers and maybe call them if problems emerge, I would say I know max 40% of the apps that are on it but I also don’t need all of them”.

 

Eivind has to deal with seniors on a weekly basis coming to his small telecom store and asking the same question about their phone over and over again: “They know that you are there and that you help them. But the issues and problems they have with their telecommunication devices are little, it seems that they are just coming to have a talk with you”. And then there is

 

Elise, a delightful old Norwegian senior strolling around through Voss and when we approached her, she took out both of her phones and said: “I got a new phone from my son recently, but my old phone still works fine. I can call my family and I even get pictures from my grandchildren. I forgot how to use my new phone, because I don’t use it that much. And I don’t want to ask my son for help every time."

With every interviewee we developed our question set, our way to approach them and how to talk to them, and every interviewee had different experiences to disclose and different habits in using telecommunication technologies. These are just a few, but all interviewees on our way contributed to the solution in some way. We couldn’t see the big picture yet, but we got inspired. It seemed that there were many issues senior citizens were facing.