Senior:Interaction

In the co-design project Senior:Interaction (S:I) a public care unit (Københavns Kommune), university researchers (ITU & The Danish Design School), industrial partners, and senior citizens in a specific urban location are working together to design new horizontal service concepts that can strengthen social interaction among seniors in the urban environment. The project started late 2009 and will be finalized late 2012.

The overall objective of this project is to develop new design concepts and interaction technologies for social interaction on top of the service models that create the basis for experience sharing and social interaction among seniors- and thus contributing to greater self-reliance and social wellbeing.

The project focuses particularly on three everyday areas: the meal, physical mobility & strength, and cultural experiences in everyday life. These everyday areas have the potential of binding people together in a neighbourhood and thus contribute to the feeling of belonging and being confident in the local environment.

The S:I project uses the design laboratory and living labs as platforms for organizing and guiding innovation. With design laboratory we refer to open collaborations between many stakeholders sharing a mutual interest in design research in a particular field. The open collaborations means that “what” is to be designed is not predefined in the outset but something, which is co-designed, experimented with and rehearsed as the process goes along.

We have finished the first concept development phase and are in the middle of the platform phase, where we are going to develop the first version of designs and prototypes based on the identified concepts and bring these into the seniors’ everyday contexts in two living labs: a senior apartment community in Valby, and ad hoc networks in Valby Parken.