{"id":5828,"date":"2026-04-21T12:01:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T19:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/colleges.claremont.edu\/thehive\/?p=5828"},"modified":"2026-04-21T12:45:40","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T19:45:40","slug":"profiles-in-impact-serena-lin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/colleges.claremont.edu\/thehive\/profiles-in-impact-serena-lin\/","title":{"rendered":"Profiles In Impact: Serena Lin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A double major in neuroscience and HCD, Serena launched <\/span><\/i>UpliftNotes <\/span><\/i><\/a>during her time at Pomona. Designed to spark meaningful conversations across generations, the toolkit helps people of all ages connect with older adults in their lives: family members, neighbors and others\u2014including those experiencing Alzheimer\u2019s or other forms of cognitive decline. She is now a consultant in the customer strategy division at Deloitte.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019ve been volunteering in memory care units since high school, and the training I always get is, basically:\u00a0 <\/span>This is how you push a wheelchair<\/span><\/i>, and <\/span>If somebody says something weird, just go with it.<\/span><\/i> That\u2019s it. Or maybe they tell you to watch a 3-hour training video\u2026as though that\u2019ll somehow be useful to a 19-year-old trying to connect with someone who\u2019s 93 and has dementia and doesn\u2019t know who you are.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When I started exploring, I saw how many people, like me, have a parent or a grandparent whose memory is slipping\u2014and don\u2019t know how to be with them.<\/span> I\u2019d hear things like:<\/span> Well, I visited my grandma, and she only talked for like, two seconds, and it makes me feel like such a bad grandchild. <\/span><\/i>But when I watched these interactions for myself, I\u2019d notice that the older person smiled\u2014even if they hardly spoke. Maybe they held their caregiver\u2019s hand. Or looked at things laid out on the table, and moved them around with their hands. Even if what they said didn\u2019t make sense to you, they\u2019re still trying to connect\u2014and that\u2019s very different from sitting and staring at a wall.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At first, I thought you had to do a formal interview to find out about people. But you can sit down at a senior center, or the synagogue, or church next door\u2014and just notice what\u2019s going on: <\/span>How are people navigating the parking lot? How are they getting up the stairs? What are they talking about on the doorstep after the service is over? <\/span><\/i>I\u2019d go to the grocery store and see how hard it was for an older person to get a can of peas off a high shelf.<\/span><\/p>\n

The more deeply you know what your users\u2019 lives are like, the more specific your problems get. You see that they really want to communicate\u2026but can\u2019t pick up the pen. So you fix that. And then they pick up the pen, but they can\u2019t make shapes, and they\u2019re getting frustrated. So you shift to a different\u00a0 activity. And then you see that they\u2019re forgetting what they were doing, so you have to figure out how to make things feel ok when someone doesn\u2019t remember what was just said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

One of the things Fred kept telling us in HCD was: F<\/span>all in love with the problem, not the solution. <\/span><\/i>But I only learned what he really meant by building <\/span>Uplift<\/span><\/i>. Don\u2019t get attached to what you\u2019ve made, because you\u2019ll definitely need to fix it\u2014and you have to be okay with that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But it doesn\u2019t stop there. You\u2019ve got to <\/span>keep <\/span><\/i>looking for the problems. Which can be really hard\u2014especially if you\u2019re a perfectionist like most of us at the 5Cs<\/span>. <\/span><\/i>It can feel like failing to keep staring at the problem, because you\u2019re thinking you should\u2019ve solved it already. But to get something right, you need to keep loving the problem\u2014even after you\u2019ve already built your product. I\u2019ve already taken <\/span>Uplift<\/span><\/i> to market, but I\u2019m still trying to find out what it\u2019s like for my customers to use it, and which needs it <\/span>isn\u2019t <\/span><\/i>meeting\u2014so I can keep making it better.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Uplift<\/span><\/i> came out of what I learned as a neuroscience student and a designer: the range of things can make it hard to have a conversation. Maybe you\u2019re a high school student visiting your grandfather at a senior home, or maybe you haven\u2019t talked to him in 10 years. Maybe you\u2019re shy or introverted like me.\u00a0 And on the other side, you have a person who may be experiencing cognitive decline, or\u00a0 is hard of\u00a0 hearing, or can\u2019t see well: and all these things are barriers I tried to solve for. <\/span>Uplift<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 gives people the tools to make this connection. You open the box, roll a die and start a conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

written by Dan Coleman<\/p>\n

published by Salina Mu\u00f1oz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A double major in neuroscience and HCD, Serena launched UpliftNotes during her time at Pomona. 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