AWS - Build On ASEAN, 2020
Note The AWS instances and its associated resources have been terminated to prevent unnecessary billing.
Note A video demonstration is available at Appendix C.
Introduction
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Build On, ASEAN is a competitive hackathon that challenges the community to create technological initiatives and solutions to address challenges faced by participating sponsors.
The team
The team I was in,SP_ABS_IDVconsisted of the following members from Singapore Polytechnic(SP)(As of 28 August 2021). The name was originally a placeholder name, but it grew on the team and we stuck with it.
- LY Nathan, Diploma in Engineering with Business
- Phang Wei Zhang, Diploma in Engineering with Business
- Teo Wen Xin, Diploma in Diploma in Infocomm Security Management
- Khiu Kim Hong, Diploma in Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Problem statement(recreated to the best of my abilities)
Retirement Solutions for a More Fulfilling Life The life expectance in Singapore is increasing due to factors such as improved medical care. Therefore, solutions need to be devised to allow for the elderly to live a more fulfilling life in their twilight years.
Significance of problem
Retiring from work means leaving the active population and no longer contributing to society, hence cutting off his/her active income. Few retirees manage to acquire a way to gain a passive income, or save enough money thanks to personal achievements, the CPF funds, or retirement plannings available to live comfortably. However, most will still rely on their younger family members and relatives to support their livelihoods[1]. This will make retirees feel like burdens to society, and impact their mental health. Furthermore, with the declining birth rates in Singapore[2], some retirees might not have any children to support them and will struggle financially after retirement. Another problem is that retirees will often spend their time idly because they do not have any pastimes, or do not have the skills to enjoy a pastime[3]. Hence they will most likely feel bored or bad to not contribute anything, as well as lead to a decline in cognitive abilities.
Therefore our team’s solution will provide a fulfilling life to retirees by ensuring that they are financially well through good retirement planning and others, as well as have a meaningful activity they can spend their time on and possibly profit from it.
Solutions Introduction
Our proposed solution will be a platform for current and future retirees which will suggest activities, hobbies, or events according to their profile, financial status, and health condition, as well as recommend appropriate retirement plans using AI technology based on those activities. This will allow them to stay physical and remain social while doing relevant activities.
Example of available activities/events (non-exhaustive):
- Partner with organisations to allow retirees to contribute part-time:
- Singapore Food Agency (SFA) and their associated farms[4][5] allows for physically able retirees to help with farm output
- National Environment Agency (NEA) allows for retirees to volunteer in their recycling efforts
- Community Centre (CC) workshops/lessons to teach elderlies/retirees new skills:
- These skills can be applied in future DBS events (e.g. Carnivals), which will allow elderlies/retirees to spend their time more meaningful and possibly earn some money from these events
- This will also allow elderlies/retirees to make new friends which they can hang out with after the workshops in order to have someone to talk to every day and not feel bored at home
- Elderlies/retirees can also participate in these events with their love ones in order to spend meaningful time and to build stronger bonds with one another
- Investment workshops/talks regarding how best to plan for your retirement, as well as opportunities such as:
- Housing investments
- Property investments
- Shares/Stock market
- Gold
The platform will be in the form of a web application as the content is information heavy and a mobile application might not be as effective in conveying information, whether textual or visual. Activities will most likely require administrative work requested by partners as well, which might not be suitable in a mobile format.
Impact of Solution
The solution has several benefits for our target audience. Firstly, physical activity. This is accomplished as the bulk of hobbies and other recreational activities can have elements of physical action. This benefits the audience by allowing them to maintain bone and muscle health, thereby reducing the risks of falling and bone fractures. The physical activity could also help with other issues such as relieving blood pressure.[6][7] Secondly, this allows the audience to maintain a connection to society. This not only allows the audience to be able to expand their social circles and maintain an emotional support network, but also has numerous other health benefits. Loneliness has been linked to a decline in cognitive abilities[8], as well as a noticeable uptick in blood pressure and cardiac issues.[9][10] Therefore, by providing the elderly with a social outlet, we are able to ensure better physical health as well as maintaining a friend group.
Next, improved financial education and retirement planning would not only be a boon for the elderly but their families at large as well. Improved financial literacy would allow the elderly to better plan and manage their finances before and during their twilight years. This would reduce the need for them to rely on their family members, thereby freeing resources for the family for use in other endeavour. Furthermore, investments over the course of several years can yield a stream of passive income for them, hence reducing the need to rely solely on their savings and CPF.
| SWOT | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Strength(S) | Being backed by the DBS bank will allow our solution to have a greater reach than community-runned efforts. This is due to DBS already having a large customer base for us to tap into. The name ‘DBS bank’ also carries prestige which may allow us to be partnered up with numerous agencies and organisations like Health Promotion Board(HPB) and Central Provident Fund(CPF) more easily. |
| Weakness(W) | Heavy use of technology in the solution could result in the elderly having difficulty using it to its fullest potential, as the elderlies may not be familiar on how to use the website application. Inherent instability in the stocks and commodities market could prove difficult for the elderly to understand. Potentially long travel times, depending on the location of the activity held. |
| Opportunity(O) | Aging population in Singapore will allow our solution to reach an increasingly wider target audience, thereby allowing for broad appeal and expansion. An expanded network of organisations due to connections from DBS could result in greater collaboration between agencies. Allowing for more diverse projects and events. |
| Threats(T) | External events like COVID19 will limit the usability of the solution. COVID19 resulted in stringent limits being placed on the accessibility of public events. This will negatively impact the solution as it is reliant on the abilities of groups to meet in public. Other events, like a recession, will cause organisations to reduce funding and efforts to collaborate and run events due to limitation of funds. This results in fewer events for the elderly to participate in. |
| PEST | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Political(P) | In Singapore, the government is open to ideas that can help the local community, especially if it is a national concern like retirement for an aging population. Therefore, the political environment will not pose a threat to the implementation of our solution, or may even make it easier to implement. |
| Economical(E) | The COVID-19 situation has greatly reduced the economy’s health, hence physical activities that could have become a business idea in normal times and a source of income for the retirees are now harder to implement and find. This greatly limits the number of physical business activities, like fairs or carnivals manned by retirees. However, there could still be online opportunities for them. |
| Social(S) | Due to COVID-19, social activities will be restricted in the number of people involved, and might not be as effective. People will be heavily discouraged in participating, retired people in particular because they are most likely the elderly, and COVID-19 can be fatal for them. Social distancing measures will have to be implemented if the involved people will still go through with the event, which will require more manpower, equipment, and time. |
| Technological(T) | Nowadays, the use of a computer is considered a basic skill, so most future retirees will be able to navigate the website. However, current retirees might have trouble with computer skills, but thankfully younger family members or acquaintances can help in that regard, especially now, during the COVID-19 period where people are forced to use the Internet. Furthermore, with the advent of AI technology being more accessible and powerful, along with the data-hungry mindset, our solution will become better at suggesting activities over time. |
The unique selling point of the solution would be the backing of DBS bank. The organisation of activities and financial literacy workshops are typically held by grassroots organisations, like Community Centres. As such events often have very limited reach, typically limited to the neighbourhood. Furthermore, due to limited resources, like funding and volunteers, events could be sporadic and far between each other. The involvement of DBS bank allows for several advantages over community lead efforts. Firstly, being the largest bank in Singapore, DBS is able to reach a significantly wider audience. The solution could be sold as part of an ‘Active Aging’ package to their current install base, hence being able to reach everyone who banks with them, and potentially those who do not. Secondly, the involvement from DBS can entice other organisations to collaborate. The name of ‘DBS’ carries sway in the context of Singapore. Hence, this would be attractive to other organisations as backing of DBS would guarantee a level of organisation and competency above that of a typical community centre. This would cause other organisations to be willing to organise more events, thereby giving the elderly a wider variety of events to participate in.
Deep Dive into Solution
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Description of each feature shown above
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Database The database systems will need to work closely with the website and AI models. Due to the sensitive nature of the data required from our users and organisation, security would be essential. Furthermore, the databases would need to be scalable to allow for versatility in administration.
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AI architecture/model The team will be using an AI model to tailor recommendations to better suit the preferences of both the individual user and our partner organisations. The AI model will analyse the actions and preferences of the user, along with feedback from partner organisations to better recommend users to events for maximum satisfaction.
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Website The website needs to be simple enough for the elderly to use easily. At the same time, it needs to be robust to facilitate the accurate displaying of events and the associated information.
User Journey The elderly will first sign up to the service, providing personal, financial and some medical information. The data will be sent to our database, which is overseen and managed by DBS. The database will also receive external information from places like the stock market. The data in the database will then be analysed by the AI model and recommendations will be made accordingly. The recommendations will be pushed to the website, where users will be able to view and select the ones that they are interested in. The sources of the events will come from external organisations who are willing to work with us and DBS.
Architecture of Solution
Our solution will make use of the following AWS services: Amazon DynamoDB, AWS Lambda, AWS SageMaker, along with Amazon Augmented AI(A2I) The Amazon DynamoDB was chosen due to its enterprise grade capabilities like encryption by default , along with the points highlighted above. The data from DynamoDB will be fed into SageMaker through AWS Lambda where the team can leverage its ability to quickly build and train models for the optimal outcome. A2I will be used to more easily show DBS, as well as partnered organisations the effectiveness of various models, as well as to help explain changes the team wants to make to the AI model.
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Going further
Since our current solution consists only of a website as the access point, one possible improvement is to make an associated mobile app. Through the app, our solution will be able to provide real-time information instantly to our target audience’s mobile phone, which is not as effective as an email sent by the website. Furthermore, our target users will be able to access the information being provided more easily, after condensing the information-heavy topic of retirement plans with the help of UX designers into a mobile-friendly format. Another improvement for our solution could be to include the other challenge statements “Personalised Investment Ideas for Relationship Managers (RM)” and “The Virtual RM” in our solution. Our team believes that using a personal relationship manager could provide retirees information more efficiently and make the experience much more personalized, so as to put them at ease during retirement or when it approaches. For DBS, this increases customer satisfaction and retention, as well as improving its public image.
The team plans on commercialising our solution both physically for elderly retirees, and digitally for future retirees. For the physical approach, posters and digital screen posters could be pushed out around the neighbourhood containing links and QR codes to our solution, as well as television advertisements. Many elderly retirees spend most of their time at home watching television. When they do leave their houses, they will usually be around their neighbourhoods at nearby parks, markets, exercising areas, etc. Therefore, advertising our solution in these areas will have the most exposure to elderly retirees. For the digital approach, we will be using tools such as Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Interactive Display Advertising, and so on to target workers who are planning their retirement. These workers are probably in the middle age range and are more likely to be familiar with more advanced digital devices and practices. Therefore, if we advertise our solution digitally, it will be able to reach out to our second group of the target audience as well.
All main features of our solution can be handled by an AWS service, which are made flexible to customers for an associated price. Therefore, as the user base and traffic increases, resources used will be scaled accordingly without major issues. In terms of business viability, in addition to selling retirement plans, revenue advertisements posted on the website and a small percentage of our partners revenue made thanks to our solution could be collected to support it.
Appendix A - References
[1]MUI, RACHEL. “Young People In Singapore Worry Their Parents Do Not Save Enough For Retirement – With Good Reason: Survey”. The Straits Times, 2018, https://www.straitstimes.com/business/economy/singapore-youths-worry-their-parents-are-not-saving-enough-for-retirement-with-good.
[2]Population Trends, 2019. 1st ed., Department Of Statistics, Singapore, 2019, https://www.singstat.gov.sg/-/media/files/publications/population/population2019.pdf.
[3]Home Alone:Older Adults In Singapore. 1st ed., DukeNUS Medical School, 2018, https://www.duke-nus.edu.sg/docs/librariesprovider3/research-policy-brief-docs/home-alone-older-adults-in-singapore.pdf?sfvrsn=6735541d_0.
[4]Agency, S., 2020. Food Farms In Singapore. [online] Sfa.gov.sg. Available at: https://www.sfa.gov.sg/food-farming/food-farms/farming-in-singapore
[5]Agency, S., 2020. The Food We Eat. [online] Sfa.gov.sg. Available at: https://www.sfa.gov.sg/food-farming/singapore-food-supply/the-food-we-eat
[6]Cdc.gov. 2020. Physical Activity And Health: A Report Of The Surgeon General, Older Adults. [online] Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/sgr/olderad.htm.
[7]2018. The Importance Of Physical Activity Exercise Among Older People. 1st ed. [ebook] Oslo: Oslo Metropolitan University, Faculty of Health Sciences. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6304477/pdf/BMRI2018-7856823.pdf.
[8]Psycnet.apa.org. 2002. Effects Of Social Exclusion On Cognitive Processes: Anticipated Aloneness Reduces Intelligent Thought.. [online] Available at: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-18351-003.
[9]https://journals.lww.com/psychosomaticmedicine/pages/default.aspx. 2002. Loneliness And Health: Potential Mechanisms : Psychosomatic Medicine. [online] Available at: https://journals.lww.com/psychosomaticmedicine/Abstract/2002/05000/Loneliness_and_Health__Potential_Mechanisms.5.aspx.
[10]Psycnet.apa.org. 2006. Loneliness As A Specific Risk Factor For Depressive Symptoms: Cross-Sectional And Longitudinal Analyses.[online] Available at: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0882-7974.21.1.140.
Appendix B - Prototyping Resources
CNET, 2019. Amazon Echo Show 8 review: Alexa is getting even better. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pchrhtTnrM4
Chard The Tech Guy, 2019. Amazon Echo Show 5: Web Browser Apps. [image] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgVLiBTUCsY
Amazon Web Services, Inc. n.d. Getting Started with AWS - Build a Serverless Web Application with AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, AWS Amplify, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Cognito. [online] Available at: https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/hands-on/build-serverless-web-app-lambda-apigateway-s3-dynamodb-cognito/
Amazon Web Services. 2017. Build Your Own Face Recognition Service Using Amazon Rekognition - Amazon Web Services. [online] Available at: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/build-your-own-face-recognition-service-using-amazon-rekognition/
Johnson, K., 2019. How Amazon’s facial recognition ambition could stunt Alexa’s development. [online] VentureBeat. Available at: https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/26/how-amazons-facial-recognition-ambition-could-stunt-alexas-development/
Amazon Web Services. 2019. How Slalom Created Personalized, Interactive Event Experiences Using Amazon Rekognition - Amazon Web Services. [online] Available at: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/apn/how-slalom-created-personalized-interactive-event-experiences-using-amazon-rekognition/
Realpython.com. n.d. Build a Recommendation Engine With Collaborative Filtering – Real Python. [online] Available at: https://realpython.com/build-recommendation-engine-collaborative-filtering/
Amazon Web Services. 2018. Call an Amazon SageMaker model endpoint using Amazon API Gateway and AWS Lambda - Amazon Web Services. [online] Available at: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/call-an-amazon-sagemaker-model-endpoint-using-amazon-api-gateway-and-aws-lambda/
Appendix B - Video demonstration and proof of participation
BuildOnASEAN2020 Singapore Entry - Team SP_ABS_IDV - Fulfilling Silver Life! Website
Appendix C - Proof of participation
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| Proof of participation |