Seminar 7 - Design for the Elderly

The last presentation was my team’s presentation. My team members were Brian, Tarun and we opted to take session and active on the Design for the elderly topic. The seminar was begun by Brian where he explained about who are elderly and about the problems faced by them. He showed the current graph of life expectancy and elderly peoples growth in the future. Then he moved into the technologies like audio interface technologies and smart homes, how they are helpful for the elderly and their efficiency in satisfying the elderly. He also walked through the web guidelines that needed to be considered while designing for the elderly. Followed by him, Tarun Introduced future technologies like Robots, wearables and VR technology for the elderly. He explained and walked through some examples of Robear, Care o bot4 and Elliq robots. Special wearable concepts like ageing suites, Superflex aura power suite etc.

My section was about the strategies for planning a cite accessible for elderly and various other IoTs that are currently available in urban cities.

Workshop

All the activities that were conducted were based on the seminar topics which covered different areas of the topic, Audio and web-based interaction design, Future technology for robotics and strategies in designing the city for elderly. The main objective of the workshops was to express the designing strategies for elderly and accessibility in various categories and also to understand the issues and struggles faced by the elderly in this modern world. Apart from the traditional design methods followed in activities session we mainly focused on following a broadly on different design methodologies like role-playing, a day in a life or ethnography research, User scenarios Sketching and prototyping methods. All the teams were given the privilege of using any of their preferred collaborative tools such as Mural, Google Docs, slides etc. The idea was to challenge the team members to design collaboratively in challenging scenarios without sticking into one common platform. Activities were conducted between four teams with different design tasks carrying out through various design technologies. We counted 4 different activities for 4 different teams and each one of us was the facilitator for the activity we developed.

The activity facilitated by me was to Design a retirement House for Group 2 ( Mary, Josephine, Chidi and Yan). The task for the team members was to develop and design ideas for a retirement home using the sketching technique. Design brief included a detailed description of Mr.Johnson life and also included A day in a life or ethnography field note. Based on the analysing the field note team were to design a retirement house with technologies and interaction touchpoints which could make the life of MrJohson easier in his retirement time. The team was given 15 minutes in the beginning for understanding and analysing the ethnography field report for developing ideas. All of them participated and equally contributed to the activity by inputting their ideas through brainstorming and sketching application. Group 2 took the privilege of using Mural as the collaborative tool which helped them in applying the sketching design process fo completing the activity successfully.

Final Design

Based on the ethnography field report analysis the team has captured a few issues faced by

Mr Johnson. The whole redesign was done based on considering the dementia issue. At first, the team designed the new house as a single floor house eliminating the constraint of moving up and down throughout. House was designed in a smart way which including smart bed, smart mirror, Alexa which can connect with digital interfaces of the house, smart fridge. All these technologies play a major role in sharing information and engaging the elder people in interaction in his independent life. More than important these technologies support people with memory loss by notifying and reminding the things missed by the elderly. Smart fridge technology suggesting and scheduling the meals for the whole week. A community dining space has been provided which eliminates the loneliness and promotes interaction with other communities and sharing experience. Lighting has been set in a smart way which calculates the intensity of light based on his daily work and rest time. It captures the mood of the user (eg: reading, sleeping, chill, etc) and adjusts the intensity of light required for the activity. By keeping in point of the connection with nature and its positive impact on elderly people, A space for exercise and recreational area in the backyard with close interaction to nature is designed. The team came up with ideas designed the overall house by keeping in mind the strategies need for the elderly.

Reflections

We had to face lots of challenges in conductin the seminar during this COVID 19 lockdown and time constraints that happen due to technical issues. All the efforts we put came worth and was able to provide a decent seminar. Each of us worked hard n developing ideas based on the design methodologies that were not commonly implemented. Overall it was a great session and was happy to complete it.