eNotes

eNotes (Emergency Notes)

Problem

How might we ensure that our loved ones are informed about what to do in unforeseen events, such as incapacitation or death, when we are no longer able to guide them? Traditional wills are cumbersome and costly, while commercial apps (note-taking/messaging) often lack security and certainty of access.

Solution

Emergency Notes (eNotes) enables you to leave straightforward instructions for your loved ones in three simple steps: Log in using Singpass, write a note, and choose whom to send it to and when (either upon incapacitation/death or immediately). When triggered, your loved ones will simply need to verify their identity through Singpass to access the note. Explore our prototype here.

Team Members

eNotes was made by a multi-disciplinary team from SNDGO and OGP:
Zi Yan Soh, Desmond Lui, Javin Chua, Zulhilmi Icksan, and Joanna Lo

Further Reading

Backstory
When the team was first formed, we wanted to solve a totally different problem: noise conflicts. This was our initial problem statement: In the heart of our bustling city, HDB flats are not just structures; they are homes where every Singaporean deserves tranquillity and safety. However, a prevalent challenge disrupts this right – noise pollution. Excessive noise not only disturbs the serenity of our homes but also impacts our well-being and sleep quality. Moreover, resolving these noise complaints currently involves multiple government agencies, leading to a significant expenditure of resources and hours, often with limited success in fostering long-term resolutions.

We put together a design prototype and spoke to 3 separate agencies: MND, MinLaw, and HDB.

After speaking with these 3 agencies, we learned that the timing of the product was not right (there are on-going efforts towards policy changes) and we were unable to find a business champion on the agency side - which was critical to the product’s success.

As such, the team decided to pivot to another problem space.

Death Note Emergency Note
The team went back to the drawing block and pitched multiple ideas. The problem space that all of us resonated with was around how might we easily and securely leave important notes to our loved ones. There are many related use cases for this:

• In many families, typically the responsibility of managing the finances and insurance falls on one person. Others in the family might not be aware of the details of it.

• When a group travels overseas, typically a single person buys the travel insurance or individually everyone gets one for themselves. Between them, no one knows what each other has gotten.

• At hospice, sometimes residents want to leave a letter behind for their loved ones but there is little reassurance that the letter will be safely delivered.

To test our theory that this would be of use to Singaporeans, we pitched eNotes as an idea to about 10 members of public. The objective was to gauge interest in this product, and through the inductive method, listen to the users’ sharings of their own potential use cases. Although our primary goal was a platform to provide individuals with a means of instruction writing for family in the case of untimely death, our user sharings brought to the forefront another objective this platform served: emotional last words. This objective was previously a secondary goal but through the frequency of which users brought this up as their potential use case, the team quickly realised that this was also a primary objective for users. 

With a week left for the hackathon, the team put together a working prototype. We put together a webapp that mainly sought to achieve: raised awareness for the need of advanced planning, detailed instructions on how to use the webapp, and chiefly, enable Singaporeans to leave notes for their family and loved ones in the event of their demise.

Using our working prototype, we reached out to 11 members of the public.

Key Findings 

• Most of our respondents had an initial response of slight discomfort talking about death. While it’s important to note that they could engage on this topic during the user research,  their body language showed that talking about death wasn’t the most natural topic. This small gesture also signified to us that they probably had not done a lot of planning for end of life.

• MOPs who are not married typically don’t have any strong use for eNotes as they generally felt there wasn’t much instructions to leave behind. 

• MOPs with who were married or have children felt that there was more use case for eNotes. However, findings within this “married and/or have children” population could be further broken down into generational themes, differences broken down here: 

  • In this population group, the users who younger (age range 20-40+) described that their use of eNotes would mainly be to leave last words to their significant other.

  • On the point of leaving “instructions” for their partner, they mentioned other tech solutions such as password managers, scheduled telegram messages etc that would make it easier for sharing account access, rather than leaving it through eNotes.

  • The users in this population who were older (age range 50-70+) also expressed more enthusiasm at the usefulness for eNotes. 

Although our users from different demographics had slightly different use cases for eNotes, this showed our team how we could better contextualise the use cases for users depending on the demographic. This also helped us tweak our landing page content better so that the use case for eNotes would be more applicable even at first glance.

View our final MVP for the hackathon here.