Macro Unit Week Three
Brief: Design a way for people to manage complex risk together
Methods: Design synthesis, crazy 8's (modified)
Team: Mo Bekkouri, Roshni Suri, Yanxu Chen, myself
Design synthesis is a crucial and, for me, a satisfying process to review all the data and assemble it so that the trends and themes become clear.
Stages of design synthesis. Image by Roshni Suri
We found that:
The pace of change of technology is too quick for the elderly to keep up, which leads them to be less interested. As their interactions are limited, they become confused when using technology which often ends up with it not working properly. This results in them becoming fearful and avoid it.
They agree that generally, technology is good, but it is for the younger generation; in their view, new technologies aren't for them so they become dependant on children/grandchildren to learn the very limited and specific things they need to do.
The elderly prefer the methods they know, which primarily are interactions with people, and distrust technology because they don't understand how it works. This can result in them being unwilling to learn anything further.
Our idea generation from these insights lead to two idea directions:
The Game To overcome the fear, distrust and negative associations with technology, we wanted to gamify the experience and bring it to the older people in a light-hearted setting. While the gameplay is competitive and based on scoring, it is more important to initiate the conversations that come with it. It seeks to capture the mapping of everyday technology in our lives, approaching a stressful topic in a playful and communicative way. I felt that this idea would create a fun and engaging experience, however we needed to be careful in its design and execution to ensure that we didn't overwhelm, isolate or exclude anyone from participating, something I wasn't sure we would be able to test in the available time.
Anaylsis of game elements to inform the design. Image by author
The Community Group Realising that the over 65's prefer humans over technology, and they fear and don't trust technology, we propose that they can manage this risk by learning from one another, forming a community dedicated to teaching each other the skills they need to continue to thrive in the changing world. I felt this was more wholesome, creating a method for people to connect with each other. However, with so many existing schemes in place, we needed to more clearly define our intentions.
Review of other community schemes for inspiration for our own. Image credits below.
Axa invited us into their office, and were generous with their time hearing our developments, research and then our ideas. They were encouraging, probing our though processes, and were accepting of both ideas. They did not have a huge amount of feedback or direction, recommending that we follow the research.
Our original aim had been to have physical prototypes to present, however idea generation had taken longer than anticipated. We were constantly critical of each idea and focussed heavily on its flaws, assuming each wouldn't be good enough. Our dismissive and negative approach meant we did not progress with any ideas into a physical prototyping stage.
3D mockup of a technology based computer game, and a poster advertising a community group. Images by Mo Bekkouri and Roshni Suri
This week's presentation was hastily put together and not practiced, in part due to time constraints, and in part due to a lack of commitment from the group. I was displeased having been consistently punctual and had enabled the group to the best of my ability, only to be let down. This resulted in a poor presentation where we needed explain and defend our ideas.
Most of the feedback received from the project partners was generally positive with insights we could use to flesh out the ideas. The tutors however, said that we were missing our complex risk, something we had worked on, but didn't present clearly. The outcome of this was to revisit the brief again, ensure we did have a clearly defined complex risk and strengthen our concepts on this basis.
Men's Shed's logo. Available at: https://menssheds.org.uk/ (Accessed 13 April 2023)
Extinction Rebellion logo. Available at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Logo_extinction_rebellion.svg (Accessed 13 April 2023)
Scouts logo. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scout_Association#/media/File:The_Scout_Association_logo_2018.svg (Accessed 13 April 2023)
Comments