Making Space to Engage: An Open-Ended Exploration of Technology Design with Older Adults

Designing for older adults can be complex. Often, designers struggle to understand people who share a very different life context. At the same time, older adults can have difficulties imagining future technologies for themselves. This creates challenges for design processes bounded by time and outcome expectations. In this paper, the authors explore a long-term, loosely structured and open-ended research process where they provided participants with prototypes to use for as long as they wanted, and only as they wanted to. By working with their own relatives and friends and moving away from structured procedures and external agendas, the authors made space for both participants and designers for deep engagements with the artifacts and process. Participants were able to better understand technology and shape it to their needs. Researchers were better able to understand and iterate on the technology designs. The authors' findings suggest that this approach might be especially appropriate for designing for and with older adults.