Designing for healthy and active ageing with intelligent technologies

Purpose Ageing is a very important societal problem that we are facing today. According to WHO, health refers to physical, mental and social well being while active ageing refers to the process of optimizing opportunities for health, social participation and security in order to enhance quality of life as people age [WHO, 2012]. Earlier research has shown that intelligent technologies can support elderly to cope with the changes of ageing and remain healthy and active (Blaschke et al., 2009). We recognise three important challenges when designing for healthy and active ageing using intelligent technologies. First, to what extend can we design for elderly technology acceptance? Second, How to design for and with elderly in this context to enable behaviour change? Lastly, ageing is a wicked problem. It requires a multi-stakeholder approach. How to design for and with the multi-stakeholder in this context? Through a number of design cases we aim at creating design guidelines for designing for healthy and active ageing with intelligent technologies. Method We conducted a number of design cases with specific focuses on the three identified challenges. In case 1 we explore the use of Senior Technology Acceptance Model especially social relationship [Chen and Chan, 2014] when designing for technology acceptance in our context. In case 2 we explore the use of the persuasive principle “reciprocity” [Chatterjee, Price, 2009] to design for and with elderly. In case 3 we explore the use of probes and co-creation approach to create a shared value among the involved stakeholders. Through qualita-tive analysis we derived some design guidelines for designing for healthy and active ageing using intelligent technologies Results & Discussion The design cases suggest that (social) participation is an important enabler for designers to work with when designing for healthy and active ageing using intelli-gent technologies. It can lead to better technology acceptance through intergenerational tech-nology learning, better motivation towards the intended behaviour change via reciprocal sup-port, and better aligned multi-stakeholder network via co-creation and probing. References 1. WHO. Active Ageing Policy Framework. A contribution of the World Health Organization to the Se-cond United Nations World Assembly on Ageing, Madrid, Spain, April 2002, http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/67215/1/WHO_NMH_NPH_02.8.pdf, visited on March 20, 2016. 2. Blaschke CM, Freddolino PP, Mullen EE, Ageing and Technology: A Review of the Research Litera-ture, British Journal of Social Work, 2009; 39(4): 641-656. 3. Chen K, Chan AH. Gerontechnology acceptance by elderly Hong Kong Chinese: a senior technology acceptance model (STAM). Ergonomics 2014; 57:635–652. 4. Chatterjee S, Price A. Healthy Living with Persuasive Technologies: Framework, Issues, and Chal-lenges. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 2009; 16(2): 171-178. 5. Sanders EBN. Information, Inspiration and Co-creation. In Proceeding of the 6th International Confer-ence of the European Academy of Design, 2005 March.