How We Spent Five Years and $5 Million Learning How to Design Software Applications for the Elderly
Speaker
Jeff Pepper
Founder, President, and CEO of Touchtown, Inc.
When
-
Where
Newell-Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium)
Description
Designing graphical user interfaces for older adults is a challenge, but that problem is dwarfed by the challenge of creating a company that can do it profitably.
In 1999 we started a company, ElderVision, with the mission of helping older adults, especially those living in retirement homes, to overcome social isolation and reconnect with their families, friends and lifelong interests online. Our initial designs were based on shared virtual reality environments and utilized innovative hardware delivery platforms.
Over time, the market taught us a great deal about what seniors want, what they actually use, and just as important, what characteristics a product must have in order to be financially successful in the retirement industry.
In this talk, we will discuss our motivation for bringing institutionalized seniors online, review the techniques we used to understand our target audience, and show the progress of our designs from the earliest VR prototypes to the current, commercially successful product that is in use by over 25,000 people at 120 retirement communities nationwide.
Speaker's Bio
Jeff Pepper is the founder, President and CEO of Touchtown Inc. (formerly ElderVision), the world’s leading provider of internet-based services to the nations 35 million seniors. He and his team have conducted over five years of research into understanding how to successfully get older people to benefit from the internet revolution, and is considered one of the senior living industry’s foremost experts on designing senior friendly computer applications. His company’s product, Touchtown®, was released in early 2002 and is now in use by over 30,000 individuals throughout the United States.
Jeff is one of the Pittsburgh region’s most successful builders of technology enterprises. He founded ServiceWare Inc. (NASDQ:SVCW), the world’s leading provider of knowledge based software and content to the customer support market, in the basement of his home in 1991. Over seven years as President and CEO he grew the company at a compound annual growth rate of over 100% to an industry-dominant position, with over 200 employees, 4,000 corporate customers, and an annual revenue run rate of over $25 million. Jeff was named Western Pennsylvania’s High Technology Entrepreneur of the Year in 1996, and ServiceWare placed #76 on the 1997 Inc 500 list of the country’s fastest growing private companies.
Jeff is the author of We’re Off to Seize the Wizard: The Revolution in Service Automation, winner of the 1992 Patton Award for best service industry publication, and the editor of Smart Support: How to Transform Your Support Organization by Leveraging What You Know. He has published dozens of articles and papers on the use of advanced technology and has spoken at over 200 industry conferences worldwide. In 1999 he was the organizer and chair of SeniorTech, the worlds first conference on seniors’ use of the internet. Jeff currently serves on the Pittsburgh Technology Councils Board of Directors, is the founder of the Pittsburgh Software CEO Roundtable, and is on the advisory board of Venture Outdoors.
In 2001 Jeff started the Winchester Thurston Middle Schools LEGO Robotics program. The team won the Best Robot Design in the Western Pennsylvania competition in Spring 2002. He served as head coach for three years.
Prior to founding ServiceWare, Jeff spent six years with Carnegie Group, Inc. as a software architect and product manager. Previously, he was the MIS Director for PERQ Systems Corporation in the early 1980s and an instructor in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where he received his BS in Mathematics in 1980. He co-holds two US patents for computer technology
Host
Brad Myers