For my thesis, I've developed a conceptual project in the fields of gerontotechnology. The aim was to create a product that would help with the social-structural gap that elders suffer because of the distance that is created inbetween a future-driven society and a person that has to face the proximity to the end of their life
Through my investigation, I came to realiza that women (because of their historical role as caregivers) were the ones that presented greater rates of unhappiness linked to the process of getting older. The problem was that, once the children grew older, and their working ages were over, the lack of hobbies was a major problem as to create personal links to society and productive activities that would fulfill their need of validation.
So the idea was to introduce creativity and design as a rewarding activity for older women: the participants were invited to play the role of the "designer". A simple set of tools was given to them so they could easly prototype 3D-totems that would symbolize the six key strenghts linked to a happy and healthy retirement: wisdom, justice, courage, moderation, humility and transcendence.
This activity would be guided by an experience designer, that would be responsible of transforming this ideas to real products to be given to the participants as a physical reminder of the knowledge learnt through this activity.
Images of the codesign and cogenerative session that was driven with the final users
If this sessions were to be conducted a significant number of times, with a greater number of participants, important conclusions could be extracted to exactly wich physicl attributes does this segment of the population links to the seven strenghts that were presented, and so this knowledge could be implemented in other gerontechnology projects to better satisfy the need of the elderly.
