The sector
Health and medical · Founders’ track record · Secure Senior Connections
Secure Senior Connections · Loneliness, never named
Older adults in the US, connected over what they already love. A platform which turns shared interests into company, online and across the table.
Gerontology in the build group3 device classes, one design languageUnder 7 weeks from screens to a working product
Your weekGardening · walking · chess
Tue 10:00Walking groupRiverside Parknew this week6 going6 going
Wed 15:00Chess afternoonVideo roomopen4 going4 going
Sat 10:00Community gardenPetersen gateproposed5 invitedconfirmed
The week fills around interests. 3 activities match yours.
Mae, 71, also grows tomatoes. Introduced over a shared interest.
Saturday holds. Mae and 4 others at the garden gate.
MatchedIntroducedConfirmed · Saturday 10:00
Growing old in the US too often means growing alone.
Friends move away, driving stops, and the phone fills with platforms built for someone else’s thumbs. The circle thins year by year.
Secure Senior Connections set out to build the counterweight: a platform connecting like-minded older adults, virtually and in person.
Gerontology sat in the build group, not in an appendix.
Secure Senior Connections put specialists in gerontology and design for older adults where the decisions were made. The work came back with an archetype rather than a demographic: there is no such user as “seniors”. There are gardeners, chess players, walkers, and choir voices, each looking for the same thing in a different room.
Nobody signs up to fight loneliness.
Offer an older adult a loneliness platform and the answer is no, because the name is an accusation. Offer Tuesday’s walking group and the answer changes.
Lead with the interest. Connection follows.
Interests first, and every path ends at a table.
The bet: organize the whole platform around shared interests, and point every path at the in-person meetup. The screen is the on-ramp, low stakes and familiar from the kitchen table. The product’s job is to move a member from that screen to a room, at their own pace.
A week with something in it.
The week opens first: activities gathered around a member’s interests, the people going, and one step which ends in person. For this audience, legibility is respect.
One language, from the first screen to the last.
Home, login, dashboard, and activities share one system: generous type, plain words, one clear action per screen.
The design screens became a working product in under 7 weeks. Olana, the platform’s conversational guide, points each member toward the people and content their interests suggest.
Home
Mobile. Every visit opens on an interest, never on the loneliness.
Login
Mobile. The first step, sized for first-time hands.
Dashboard
Tablet. One place which answers what comes next.
Activities
Desktop. Where a plan gets a place and a time.
UI library
The type sizes live in the parts, so no later screen can shrink them.
Functional documentation
How each one behaves, written down for whoever inherits it.
The platform knows exactly who it serves, and why.
The work ended with a clear picture of the member the platform serves, and a value proposition carrying both function and feeling: what the product does for them, and what it means to them. The platform went live in the United States.
Membership and engagement belong to Secure Senior Connections and are theirs to report. What the design is accountable for is the shape: a platform which leads with interests, moves at the member’s pace, and treats a Saturday at a table as the measure of success.
Record. Secure Senior Connections, United States.
Work led by Formist’s founders in prior practice.
Discipline. Product strategy · platform design · design research.
The meetup, in the hand.
Where the screen retires
Confirming takes one action, and nothing after it happens on a phone.
The future of digital health is judged by what happens after the screen.
Bring the ambition. Start a conversation.