Mobilizing Senior Citizens in Co-Design of Mobile Technology

Introduction

Participatory design and co-design processes with senior citizens require rethinking of conventional methodological approaches for recruiting, mobilizing and continued motivation of senior participants. In the Give&Take project, new concepts for service sharing are explored, and a mobile app is co-designed with older adults to support service sharing in local communities. Our paper shares experiences from this project based on work in co-design laboratories in Austria and Denmark. Notions of design culture, everyday practice and situated elderliness backgrounds our accounts of recruitment from both co-design settings, and frames methodological issues related to mobilizing older adults in co-design work. We discuss our experiences from both settings and suggest methodological strategies based on our work. An important aim of the Give&Take co-design work was to explore and conceptualise a model for everyday service sharing in local communities in order to design a mobile digital platform running on smartphones and tablets. The use of these technologies impacted our recruitment and mobilization strategies.