Friend meeting/tracking application for the Elderly

Client: Austin Donnelly, Microsoft Research <Austin.Donnelly@microsoft.com>

Elderly people sometimes need help to remain active and social. This project explores how a smartphone can arrange social gatherings/ meetings for them. This might include encouraging people to meet up by locating their friends, perhaps notifying them that a friend is nearby, and maybe even suggesting a location to meet. It may also be useful as a monitoring device for patients who make a habit of wandering off, distressing their family and carers. The user interface is important, since it must be accessible to those with less good eyesight and hand coordination. There will be little credit for boilerplate features such as user registration, account maintenance and database design, rather we expect to see innovative technical solutions to the user interface, messaging, security (privacy) and identity. The final goal is a Windows Phone 7 application that has been accepted into the Marketplace for general availability. Phones will be provided for testing.

Note that Windows 7 development requires .NET tools, so the development language for this project will either be C#, F# or VB.