The prospects are clear: we will live longer. The number of people aged 65 and up will increase over the next few decades. Society will change as a result, but how? Connectedness is a powerful tool rooted in human nature. By unfolding the nature of relationships and age-based transitions in life, we invite the reader to join us in an effort to design for connectedness. And to reframe the picture, rethink our options and reinvent how to Connect.
Editors: Sabine Wildevuur, Dick van Dijk, Thomas Hammer-Jakobsen, Mie Bjerre, Anne Äyväri, Jesper Lund Copy editor: Joy Maul-Phillips Book design: Pier Taylor Printed by: IPP Printers Back cover image: Creative Commons
Waag Society Nieuwmarkt 4 1012 CR Amsterdam The Netherlands T +31 (0)20 557 98 98 F +31 (0)20 557 98 80 society@waag.org www.waag.org Copenhagen Living Lab Torveporten 2 DK-2500 Valby Denmark T +45 20 23 22 05 hamm@copenhagenlivinglab.com www.copenhagenlivinglab.com BIS Publishers Building Het Sieraad Postjesweg 1 1057 DT Amsterdam The Netherlands T +31 (0)20 515 02 30 F +31 (0)20 515 02 39 bis@bispublishers.nl www.bispublishers.nl
ISBN 978 90 6369 331 2 Copyright © 2013 Waag Society, the individual authors and BIS Publishers All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owners. This publication is made possible with he kind support of the Ambient Assisted Living Joint Programme (AAL JP). The AAL JP is a funding activity that aims to create better condition of life for the older adults and to strengthen the industrial opportunities in Europe through the use of information and communication technology (ICT).
Connect Design for an Empathic Society
Sabine Wildevuur Dick van Dijk Thomas Hammer-Jakobsen Mie Bjerre Anne Äyväri Jesper Lund BIS Publishers
Preface
Connectedness is a manifold phenomenon. It relates to our identity construction process, our need to feel independent while simultaneously being emotionally connected to other human beings. Connectedness is an opportunity, which differs from existing markets for experiences, assistive technologies and communication. Design for connectedness refers to creating environments (in the broadest sense) that support, amplify and motivate those things in life that are important for improving wellbeing. Europe – and indeed the world – faces the challenge of preventing loneliness and isolation amongst a growing group of senior people. The oldest part of the population is at particular risk of becoming isolated and lonely as they grow older and their work-related networks erode. While working in the area of technology and ageing, we found out that there is a whole new area to be explored, which is the phenomenon of connectedness. This book is born as an idea of a group of people from very different backgrounds, working on projects in the field of Ambient Assisted Living, one of them being Express to Connect (see Glossary on page 105 for more details). Some of us have a business and/or marketing background, others have backgrounds in anthropology, medicine, ICT, design or computer interaction; we all discovered that connectedness is an issue that has hardly been covered. We felt the urge to explore this new territory of connectedness, and while working on it we discovered new opportunities, which we would like to share with you. This book offers our new perspectives on the emerging market of ‘ageing-driven design’, and on how to improve or transform the way we are working now. Most of you who read this book are, to some extent, already involved in specific activities under the overarching themes of connecting, being active, learning, ageing etc. Design for connectedness is about support for behavioural change that increases connectedness in day-to-day routines. It’s not about encouraging a completely novel set of behaviours. Rather, it is about supporting human connections, especially during major transitions in life such as retirement.
1 A changing society 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Connecting 1.3 Ageing 1.4 Conceptions of ageing and ‘the old’ 1.5 Changing life structures 1.6 Transitions as new approaches for identifying needs 1.7 Innovations to facilitate connectedness 1.8 The opportunity space References Images and figures
8 11 12 14 20 26 34 39 42 46 47
2 Understanding connectedness 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Connectedness 2.3 Connectedness and wellbeing 2.4 Healthy ageing 2.5 The three E’s of relationships 2.6 Stay connected References Images and figures
48 51 52 60 63 68 73 78 79
3 The risks of disconnectedness 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Transitions in life Retirement Illnesses and disabilities Loss of loved ones 3.3 Being disconnected: ‘social death’ 3.4 Rituals 3.5 Adapting to transitions: a ‘new me’ Preparation In between New daily routine Being acknowledged and of use Readjustment 3.6 Transition as an opportunity Innovation tracks References Images and figures
80 83 85 86 86 87 90 93 95 98 102 106 111 114 115 116 118 118
4 Putting people centre stage 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Design for connectedness 4.3 Innovation canvases and value Strategy canvas Business Model Canvas 4.4 The People Value Canvas 4.5 Building blocks of the People Value Canvas 4.6 Gathering user insights: from target group to personal drives Building block I: People Building block II: Needs Building block III: Characteristics Building block IV: Motivation Building block V: Context 4.7 Solutions and effects Building block VI: Technology Building block VII: Process Building block VIII: Experience Building block IX: Effect References Images and figures
120 123 124 130 131 132 134 137 138 139 140 142 143 143 160 161 162 163 165 172 173
5 Do It With Others: Towards an empathic society 5.1 Introduction 5.2 People-centred innovation 5.3 Do It With Others (DIWO) DIWO approach: The Living Lab 5.4 Different views on innovation Understanding and empathy Design thinking Prototyping Dialogue Multidisciplinarity and roles 5.5 Organising people-centric innovation 5.6 Connecting – Do It With Others! References Images and figures
174 177 180 184 185 188 190 191 194 195 198 199 201 204 204
Glossary Acknowledgements
206 213
Connecting
ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL (1847-1922) PATENTED THE TELEPHONE
Connecting people has become big business, as Nokia can attest. The Finnish multinational communications and IT corporation generates its income from technologies that facilitate exactly that. In some sense, it could be said that their journey towards 'Connecting People' also started in Italy. In the late nineteenth century, Italian inventor Antonio Meucci developed a voice-communicating device which he called a teletrofono. It transmitted and received electro-magnetic waves, converting sound into electrical vibrations and back again. It was one of the first steps towards our modern telephone, a device that connects people in a way that would have been unimaginable in those early years. It was Alexander Graham Bell, however, who has been credited as the inventor of the first working telephone. He obtained the patent in 1876 for an ‘apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically’. Bell’s success was based upon the improvements he and his team made to the first primitive telephone. Basing his operations on the commercially viable telephones he developed, he built a successful business. Bell did for the telephone what Henry Ford did for the automobile, turning telephony into a successful business. The technical aspect of being connected is one thing, but connectedness – feeling connected – is another matter entirely, and is very relevant in the context of ageing well. Ageing is an important topic in our contemporary society, and is in no way isolated. It touches on many social issues, including healthcare, housing, mobility, the workforce and education, and is often regarded solely from a negative perspective. The growth rate of the older population (1.9 per cent) is significantly higher than that of the total population (1.2 per cent), according to the United
AVERAGE ANNUAL GROWTH RATE OF TOTAL POPULATION AND POPULATION AGED 60 OR OVER: WORLD, 1950–2050
PERCENTAGE
3
2 60+ 1
TOTAL 0
1950/55 1975/80 2000/05 2025/30 2045/50
Scandinavian participant within 5 the Express to Connect project YEARS
SOURCE: UNITED NATIONS
1.265 AN “It’s not like we fearLIFE forEXPECTANCY our well-AT AGES 60, WORLD, 2000–2050 being every day. It’s more like 25 when you carry out a friend’s coffin and think, ‘thank God it’s not me’. We’re not consciously 20 concerned – but if you sense something, like the bad backache I had yesterday, it15makes you wonder… There is only a millimetre’s difference10defining whether you feel good or not.”
0 2000/2005
2025
Nations. The greatest impact is expected between 2015 and 2035 in several parts of the world, when the ‘baby-boom generation’ starts reaching older ages. The good news is, we have been so successful in treating diseases that we live longer and get older. The bad news is that this will put increasing pressure on our public systems: the retirement funds (insufficient to cover pensions) and the healthcare system (ailments common in old age, more chronic diseases, etc.). These changes have been referred to as a burden on society, an impending deluge, a financial crisis, or as catastrophic demographic changes. However, since they are inevitable, we would do better to look on the bright side of life, as expressed in 2010 by J. Beard of the World Health Organisation: 1
“While much attention has been given to the challenges presented by the transition to older populations, this demographic shift is also an opportunity to society. If older people can retain their health, and if they live in an environment that allows them to remain active participants in society, their experience, skills and wisdom can be seen as an overlooked resource. Indeed, there is growing evidence that rather than being a burden, economic flows often run from older people to younger generations until quite advanced age.” 2 We agree with Beard and are convinced that we should open up the debate about ageing, starting from a positive point of view and looking at what older adults contribute to society.
13
Returning to Charlie and Marie’s A Tale of Ageing, we see how needs related to life after retirement have always been dealt with as they came up, rather than anticipated and planned for.
1.3
SOURCE: The Young Foundation
19
1.2
1.5
JACK NICHOLSON IN THE BUCKET LIST (2007)
33
Case illustration: Loppukiri senior community, Finland
2.4
Tuula Talvela, inhabitant of the community, developed by seniors for seniors: “My husband died more than 16 years ago; I retired one year later. I was 61 years old then and still in good health. So I was living alone some years and in the long lonely days I often thought, what if I still am alive after 20 years? Is it always going to be like this? “I heard about an association called Active Seniors. Their message was simple: senior citizens should be active and take their life and wellbeing into their own hands. The Association had the idea to build a house where people could live and work together, give each other company and support. The target was to keep seniors both mentally and physically fit for as long as possible. This should make it possible to postpone the need of municipal help, thus reducing the costs for society.” “In 2004, I saw an advertisement where they offered Association membership and stated that there were some flats free in the house. In English, Loppukiri means ‘Final Spurt’ or ‘Sprint’. We moved into the house in 2006. There are 58 flats, fully equipped. On the seventh floor there are two saunas with a fireplace room and a wide terrace with a view of the sea and city. The 80-person dining room, laundry, library, office, gymnastics room and guest room belong to the house’s shared spaces. Loppukiri is a housing corporation – the inhabitants are shareholders of their flats – with one exception; one flat is owned by the City of Helsinki.”
65
Case illustration: Southwark Circle
The Southwark Circle community believes that people can be each other’s solution, and backs it up every day, week and month by helping each other out with life’s practical bits and pieces. These are ideas that people helped bring to life themselves. Southwark Circle was co-designed and tested with over 250 older people and their families, and developed by Participle Ltd. Since its launch in May of 2009, Circle has worked with hundreds of people to continue shaping how it works and what it does and plans to do. Southwark Circle is a membership organisation and is fully built on the commitment and involvement of members and helpers. Southwark Circle is a social enterprise registered in the UK as a Community Interest Company (CIC) – caring about maximising the social impact and committed to ensuring that any profits will be re-invested in the community. Southwark Circle is a new way of doing things that aims to help you lead the life you want to lead, and is counting on you to help improve the service and grow the community. In 2013 there are seven Circle's operating (Southwark, Havering, Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea, Nottingham, Rochdale and Suffolk). The value of Southwark Circle is twofold: it increases individual members’ quality of life and reduces the need for public sector services. www.circlecentral.com
2.4
67
SOURCE: EXACTITUDES
Transitions in life
3.2
TRANSITIONS
DESIRED OUTCOMES
RETIREMENT
IDENTITY OUTSIDE INSTITUTIONS
ILLNESS AND DISABILITY
INDEPENDENCE
LOSS OF DEAR ONES
EMOTIONAL CONNECTIONS
SOCIAL CONNECTEDNESS
LIFE-CHANGING TRANSITIONS AND DESIRED OUTCOMES
Everyone encounters life-changing transitions, from early childhood on; going to school, moving out of the parental house, living together or getting married. The challenges of transitions in life can either hinder or motivate people as they work to achieve desired outcomes later in life. Looking specifically at this second half of our lives, three major transitions are predictable for most of us: we will retire, we will lose some of our mental or physical capabilities, and we are increasingly likely to lose people close to us. Even though these transitions are inevitable to some extent, we don’t know if and when they will happen. Given the nature of the transitions, we will not have had the opportunity to practice or learn how to deal with them. Some of us will witness sudden challenges and need something or somebody that can support us throughout the process of coping with it. The three major age-related transitions have a severe impact on how we live and organise our social life on a day-to-day basis. We therefore have to find some way of dealing with them in order to be able to keep on living our lives in a satisfying way.
85
In between
The in between phase can be understood as an irregular period (in time and space) which is not linked to a regular daily structure. In terms of rituals, there might be a need to manifest and point out that there’s a shift from one stage of life to another that entails ways of celebrating and marking this change as significant and meaningful. Examples of personal approaches to dealing with the transitional state of retirement could include perceiving it as ‘a cocoon state’, throwing a ritual party (inviting family and friends), symbolic burning of clothes, throwing a parade in your own honour, travelling extravagantly, taking time off to investigate different associations and clubs, and tidying up and renovating the house and garden. If we view the preparation phase in dealing with an illness as a period of becoming aware of signs and symptoms and dealing with fear and anxiety,
the in between phase constitutes the diagnosis and typically the associated shock and crisis. However, it also offers clarification and ends a period of great uncertainty and unease, thus marking the beginning of a period of re-orientation and restructuring of everyday life. There may still be some fear and anxiety, but knowing the problem makes it possible to take action: put it into words, decide to keep it secret or perhaps share the information with select family and friends, and start adapting to it. When we lose a loved one, the ritual ceremony of the funeral is the institutionalised way of handling the transition in our modern Western societies. It has its own specific language and definition of what to do, when, where and how. Allowing for some cultural variations, the steps are systematically put into a system of what to do, offering a clearly defined script of what will happen – at least for a short while.
“Retirement felt strange the first week or so. But then we had arranged to travel the first half year. We had bought a house in Nice, and we stayed there in February and then we took ‘free leisure time’ here at home during the summer. And then everyday life slowly started to fall into place.” (Danish man)
“It was harder for friends to get in contact because they knew that my husband didn’t want to be ill, he didn’t want anyone to see him as a sick person, and then when I contracted cancer I thought, goddammit, I don’t want it to be like that! So I talked to everyone about it.” (Swedish woman)
“Then I became a retiree and I took some time off to think: ‘What should I do now?’ I investigated different voluntary organisations, what they did; I stopped working in July and took time off during autumn. By the new year, I had decided that I wanted to work for Save the Children.”
3.5
(Swedish woman)
“He had told me several years ago: ‘When I die, then there should be jazz music in the church.’ And that’s what he got. I am sure that he thought that it was great, and it was. It was amazing to the people who were there. It was so fantastic. I can look back at it with joy, and he would also have thought that it was really good.” (Danish woman)
103
Case illustration, Express2Connect: Presenting the user
Persona's
The insights arising from qualitative research can be channelled into ‘portraits’. Much like a ‘persona’, a portrait is a description of your audience, but based on empirical data from your qualitative research rather than a fictive description. Portraits anchor the differences within the identified user needs. These portraits function as: – Vehicles for empathy and identification; – Visual depictions of knowledge and information; – Representations of certain market segments. They can be used to map how well the proposed solutions fit the identified needs and to prioritise certain features over others. In the studies, we explored the variety of peoples’ perceptions of and experiences with challenges related to retirement, disabilities and loss of loved ones. Six portraits were built, ex-
tracted from the empirical, qualitative data in order to capture and summarise the ethnographic insights into stories of people typical of a certain segment, thus ensuring that the reasoning of the development was solidly grounded in real needs. As a result, the portraits are specific descriptions of ‘real’ users – not people made up by designers or marketers – and their needs, covering the broad range of needs within different possible users. The portraits were used in consortium team meetings to gain a shared understanding of our target group, the people we will be designing for. Working in concert with all the consortium partners, we processed the stories. In order to fully digest the research data, we worked together to connect fictitious likely names and residential areas to the real research data to ensure we all really understood the material, while ensuring that respondents would remain anonymous.
Case illustration, Express2Connect: Developing a set of storytelling games
4.6
Pick my choice
Intergenerational exchange
As a result of our exploration of solutions, we developed a set of storytelling games, by now called Storyville, in which personal material (photographs, music) is incorporated into interactive, intergenerational multiplayer games. A number of different games have been developed (with even more still in the conceptualisation stage), in which digital archive material, personal material and social media (e.g. Facebook) are used to promote interaction between players. The aim of the games is to encourage story sharing.
well as those with little or no experience with computers or tablets.
When people physically sit together to exchange stories through an iPad, this creates connectedness, rather than isolating people in their individual use of a screen. The photos on the iPad generate interaction and provide opportunities to explore each other’s stories in more depth. The game was designed according to the principles of Designfor All so as to accommodate people with declining eyesight or hearing, as
it is important to offer a range of different games, both to provide variety and to accommodate people’s personal preferences. Intergenerational exchange offers value for all those involved. On the one hand, it gives young people insight into older people’s experiences; older people were all young once, with their own ideals and dreams. At the same time, it encourages older people to be more involved in young people’s lives. Content The games act as triggers for stories and conversation. The conversation starts from shared memories, shared interests and activities, recognition and personal associations. Each game uses media such as photos or questions to start interacting and sharing. Since we want the game to be uplifting and em-
153
“Even Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, best known for emphasising selfinterest as the lifeblood of human economy, understood that the concepts of self-interest and empathy don’t conflict. Empathy makes us reach out to others, first just emotionally, but later in life also by understanding their situation. This capacity likely evolved because it served our ancestors’ survival in two ways. First, like every mammal, we need to be sensitive to the needs of our offspring. Second, our species depends on cooperation, which means that we do better if we are surrounded by healthy, capable group mates. Taking care of them is just a matter of enlightened self-interest.”
5.1
Frans de Waal, Dutch primatologist and ethologist 3
Photo: Fernando Guerra
179
People-centred innovation
In order to pursue ‘real value for real people’ and to create sustainable solutions and business models, the innovation process itself needs to be designed carefully, which is what Richard Normann, Swedish management consultant and researcher, calls ‘designing for designing’. Designing an innovation process that allows for the emergence of new solutions is a twofold task. The first part involves designing a process based on what we know. The second part is designing room for exploring the unknown and creating new business opportunities that have not yet been achieved. When we start out, we may not yet be able to imagine what to develop or how to describe a solution, but we can dream of the effects on people’s lives, the scope of reality that will be affected and the nature of future business. The innovation process needs to facilitate that from the first stages onwards. We see the design process not as a plan for building a specific solution, but rather as an iterative process for learning and building knowledge, resulting in a product or service. As such, it is not a linear journey, but a dynamic trajectory with potential deviations and backflows. We started with the ‘Wheel of Innovation’. The first step in the wheel calls for an initial understanding – and questioning – of a problem or opportunity which will allow a glimpse of what can be achieved and what resources and competencies it will require to take on the endeavour. This ambition frames the vantage point and defines the questions for the following step. Answering these questions leads to a reframed understanding of the problem or opportunity at hand. Dreams, actions and experiences are captured as data and interpreted as insights into needs and desirable outcomes. This reframed understanding defines the design space and allows for targeted ideation. The outcome of this step is a conceptual framework: a principal description that synthesises the understanding of needs and desired outcomes with overall requirements for technology, forming possible courses of action or a preferred approach that will fulfil important unmet needs. The framework allows for an evaluation of technologies fulfilling the requirements, and for initial prototyping. The concepts are turned into tangible forms, known as ‘experience prototypes’: first drafts of a future solution. The experience prototypes allow for direct dialogue with users and an evaluation of ideas.
5.2
INNOVATION WHEEL
Value & growth opportunities
2 INNOVATIVE ETHNOGRAPHY
1 VALUE CREATION Opportunity identification
Data collection Pattern recognition
Commercialisation System map
Reframing
Realisable
END USERS
Syntheses
5 ECO-SYSTEM ANALYSIS Real life testing Ideation & prototyping
3 TRANSFORMING INSIGHTS Conceptual framework & opportunity catalogue
Reconfigured solution
4 CO-CREATION
181
5.2
183