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.

A week with one appointment in it.

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.

The same age, different Tuesdays.

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.

The name makes a promise, and the structure keeps it. Membership opens with a personal invitation code, the community runs on 3 written rules, and an assistant sits in the header of every screen.

The screen does the introducing. The table does the rest.

SecureSeniorConnections?

Welcome to SecureSeniorConnections!

Ruth sent you a personal code. Members arrive invited, so there is no public signup.

472

Join the community

Lost your code? Ask Ruth to resend it

HomeFavoritesChatsProfile

Invited in. No public signup.

Community guidelines?

House rules,
three of them.

Short enough to remember, which is the point.

Be respectful

Every member is a person, not a profile.

Be kind

Write as if the reader were across the table.

Do no harm

When in doubt, ask for help. It is one tap away.

Agreed once, at joining. Reported in one tap, any time after.

HomeFavoritesChatsProfile

3 rules, one line each.

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. Around it sits the rest of the commons: events on a calendar, groups with their own discussions, chats, shared photo albums, volunteering nearby, editors’ picks to read, and a help center in member language. For this audience, legibility is respect.

One membership, the whole commons.

One language, from the first screen to the last.

From the invitation to the help center, the product ran to more than 12 surfaces in one language: 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.

The home screen at desktop, rebuilt in the studio’s design language: the week’s plans, a gardening circle, an editors’ pick, and a chat, under one greeting — Home: the week, the people, and one thing to read.

The invitation

A code field and one action, sized for a first-time hand.

Events

A calendar of things to do, filtered to near and soon.

Groups

Discussions which belong to the group, not to a feed.

Chats

One to one, in type sized for reading glasses.

Volunteering

Purpose counts as connection: hours filtered by place and time.

UI library

Every size and word lives in documented parts, ready for whoever inherits them.

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 product, in the hand.

The meetup detail on a tablet, rebuilt in the studio’s design language: Saturday 10:00 at the community garden, 6 going, one large confirm action — The last screen before the room.

Where the screen retires

Confirming takes one action, and nothing after it happens on a phone.

The events calendar on a tablet, rebuilt in the studio’s design language: a week of activities and one volunteering hour, filtered to near and soon — Where the week gets its plans.

The calendar behind the week

Events, volunteering, and games on one surface, near and soon.

The future of digital health is judged by what happens after the screen.

The sector

Health and medical

See the sector

Bring the ambition. Start a conversation.