Article by Jessy and Sriram
Storyblog by Euclea Tan, Verlyn Ku, Natalie Lem, Andrew Sutjipto
The Groundwork team has continued its work into the second month! The team has rolled out the first booklet for July, and we are proud to say that the freshmen have begun their work on their second booklet for the edition of August!
As the world around us moves forward, it becomes more and more essential for us to look out for the needs of our citizens who might be left behind. With the advent of the digital era, it is becoming even harder for many of them to keep up with the technological leaps introduced. The largest proportion of this group is our senior citizens. Understanding this, the freshmen and directors of the USP Batch Project set up the educational component of our monthly booklet.
The creators of the education component had chosen to focus on a key facet of our everyday lives: communication.
In an era of instant communication, many tools are available online for us to communicate with each other. Instant communication from one end of the earth to the other has become possible. One of the most popular tools that are used for this is Whatsapp, which has become a staple in our daily communication. With its widespread use, the BP team has taken up the task of educating the elders on how to use Whatsapp.
In our first Zoom meeting, the BP directors informed the freshmen who had joined the project on the tasks ahead. The first question that popped into everyone’s mind was: How can we explain Whatsapp clearly and concisely in our booklet? The solution did seem straightforward. We could use a step-by-step user manual accompanied by screenshots to provide visual aids for the seniors. The real challenge came in presenting the information. The key was to ensure that the content could be easily understood by individuals with little/no experience in using a digital platform. This was the greatest hurdle set for the team to get over.
The education team set to work. Their first task was to set the syllabus of the education component, ensuring that it addressed the very basic knowledge required to utilise the application. They started from scratch, working from the very basics. They started with instruction on downloading the application onto their mobile devices, followed by the very basics of setting up a Whatsapp account. The instructions also gave a virtual tour of the various features available to the seniors, showing them all the different tools they can use to customise their Whatsapp account and begin communicating with their friends and family.
Throughout this process, the team had stumbled across various challenges. To begin, the team were immediately thrust into a fixed page limit for their component. This became a key challenge as the content, while second nature for us, was not especially easy to explain. As mentioned by Raiza from Groundwork, one of their greatest challenges faced was ‘making sure the content is readable for the elderly...and doing all of that while keeping to the page limit’.
The process of the booklet’s design also saw various issues. The visual aids used were to be screenshots from the various applications. These images had to be processed by the design team before the release of the booklet. The team had worked painstakingly to ensure the images were easy to view and relevant to the content of the guide. The process wasn’t always straightforward, even leading up to a time crunch nearing the deadline. However, the design team pushed on forward, ensuring the best standards of their content.
The creation of the booklet has been one of the highlights of the freshmen of BP Groundwork. This was our first collaborative project as a cohort, and as anticipated we had faced issues in functioning as a unit on the get-go. The team entered without knowing each other, and it posed a few communication issues when we began work on the project. The inability to have face-to-face meetings did not help.
Despite the rocky start, it would be an understatement to say the BP freshmen overcame the odds and produced an excellent quality of work. The final product, BP Groundwork’s July Booklet, stands a testament to the hard work and dedication put in by the team. Each member gave it their best despite their various external commitments and in the process, became more than acquainted with the members of their teams. This process allowed us to not only bridge the technological gap for the seniors of Filos, but also befriend the community that we will be spending the next 4 years of our lives with.
BP Groundwork has begun work on the August Groundwork booklet. The education team, following the theme of communication, will be diving deeper into the use of communication devices and exploring the various tools that it offers beyond texting. This will include creating Whatsapp groups and voice recording. Through this, we hope to show the seniors the expanded possibilities Whatsapp offers for communication and the ease it offers in comparison to regular texting. BP Groundwork hopes to not only further the dive into the content but also improve on the design. As mentioned by Natalie, one of the designers of the booklet, improvements will be made to ensure ‘feedback on the screenshots’ will be addressed as well. We await with enthusiasm to see the final result of the hard work being put in by the BP committee and the freshmen of BP!
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