Brief
It's a project worked with Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (IRISS) and Perth and Kinross Council for this design for service project in Pitlochry. The local ageing population has considerable consequences for social services. This project aims to help elderly people in local communities fi nd out the gaps between their demands and local services whilst providing creative solutions by applying series of co-design approaches and convivial tools to our design process. Our service acts as a facilitator who helps to building bridge between the young and old in local communities.
Challenge
The biggest challenge in filed research is how to make a conversation with elderly people and gather information at the same time.
METHODS
Mind mapping // Stakeholders and case study // Rip and mix // Persona and story board
What we designed
In the end, we focused on facilitating communication across generations. Our undamental approach is to set up skills and interests sharing workshops that connect both young people the elderly in local organizations and communities. These workshops could help participants find their strong suit and make them realize that they could benefit each other by using what they are good at.
Firstly, we are going to invite people from the existed stakeholders such as churches and social societies to join our workshops. We hold two different workshops base on two age groups so that they can get inspiration from people in similar age. During the workshops we are going to conduct a series of selfdiscovery games and activities to help participants find their strong suit. At the end of each workshop we would explain our purpose and distribute questionnaires to gather information about what is their strong suit and what they what to learn in the future. Then we match people from different age groups as long as one people’s strong suit could satisfy another’s needs. In the final stage, we inform and pull them together to establish a big crossgenerational community. Instead of creating isolated two-people social circles, our ideal social model is more like a net.
The spirit inside is to help elderly people recover a sense of worth and encourage them to keep curiosity alive by interacting with the young.
