Memoryscape: Designing with Senior Citizens as Memory Meditation

Supporting senior citizens with tools to recollect past experiences about everyday life is gaining ground within HCI research. In this paper, we focus on how seniors reminiscing can be a resource for designers to uncover the situated aspects. In particular, we argue that an analytical focus on seniors’ memories is a fruitful stance for tracing how design practice situates issues of senior wellbeing. We employ the case of designing with senior citizens to design ICT for supporting adherence to physical therapy at home and discuss two retrospective examples. These examples highlight how seniors’ physical wellbeing was situated in, memories of a musically rich and mobile life, and memories of youthful male body. Through retrospection, we offer the preliminary notion of memoryscape as a conceptual term for orienting how a design process can mediate seniors’ memories as a way of accounting for situated elderliness in design.