Kintra, for remote intergenerational connection

There is an opportunity to enable spontaneous, low-effort interaction between grandparents and teenagers. Participants described contact becoming less frequent and less naturally initiated as teenagers became older, while availability was identified as the most common barrier to emotional closeness. Benchmarking also identified a gap for interactions requiring low setup and ongoing effort. Design could therefore support interaction that can occur in the moment, without requiring extensive planning, coordination or commitment from either person.

A second opportunity is to reduce reliance on conventional screen-based communication. Benchmarking showed that most existing solutions relied on phones, apps or websites, while phone calls were the most commonly reported communication method in the survey. This suggests an opportunity to explore more direct and dedicated forms of interaction that reduce dependence on conventional communication platforms. Such an approach could also reduce the number of steps required to participate, particularly for grandparents who may experience barriers associated with digital communication.

There is also an opportunity to support independent initiation of contact. Participants described teenagers not always naturally initiating communication, with parents sometimes prompting or facilitating contact. This aligns with secondary research highlighting the role of parents in maintaining grandparent-grandchild contact. As teenagers become more independent, design could support them in initiating
and responding to interactions directly, while also allowing grandparents to initiate contact
without requiring parental involvement.

A further opportunity is to support a sense of shared presence across distance. Participants most commonly reported missing being present for important moments, followed by everyday experiences and seeing each other’s reactions. This supports research identifying the loss of everyday awareness and natural interaction as a challenge of geographical separation. Rather than only enabling communication about these experiences, design could provide opportunities for grandparents and teenagers to participate in aspects of each other’s everyday and important moments despite being physically separated.

The final opportunity is to prioritise meaningful shared experiences rather than communication alone. Participants associated emotional closeness with the quality, depth and meaningfulness of interactions, while shared activities were described as providing common ground and supporting conversation. This aligns with research defining emotional closeness as multidimensional and related to relationship quality. Design could therefore create opportunities for grandparents and teenagers to do, experience or respond to something together, using shared activity as a way to support both interaction and conversation while accommodating teenagers’ independence and changing priorities.