UCLIC Seminar - Designing with, for and by Older Communities

Speaker: Dr John Vines, Newcastle University

Over the last several decades there has been a huge emphasis from funding councils, government agencies, industry and academia alike on designing technology to enhance later life. This can be seen most prominently in research focused on assistive technologies and interventions to support independent living in old age. While there is inherent value in such work, less time has been spent exploring the ways older citizens might be active contributors to local neighborhoods, co-producers of rather than users of community services and infrastructure, and have significant expertise and capital that could be better harnessed in technology design. In this talk I'll discuss our research from the last several years where we¹ve collaborated with older citizens to explore the design, prototyping and co-production of (digital) services in the domains of personal finance, social care and lifelong learning. I'll finish up by discussing some of our ongoing research on the digital social care theme of the digital civics research centre at Newcastle University, highlighting some of the new socio-technical platforms we¹re developing to build on the insights from this earlier work.

About the speaker: Over the last several decades there has been a huge emphasis from funding councils, government agencies, industry and academia alike on designing technology to enhance later life. This can be seen most prominently in research focused on assistive technologies and interventions to support independent living in old age. While there is inherent value in such work, less time has been spent exploring the ways older citizens might be active contributors to local neighborhoods, co-producers of rather than users of community services and infrastructure, and have significant expertise and capital that could be better harnessed in technology design. In this talk I'll discuss our research from the last several years where we¹ve collaborated with older citizens to explore the design, prototyping and co-production of (digital) services in the domains of personal finance, social care and lifelong learning. I'll finish up by discussing some of our ongoing research on the digital social care theme of the digital civics research centre at Newcastle University, highlighting some of the new socio-technical platforms we¹re developing to build on the insights from this earlier work.

Time: Wednesday 22nd June, 3pm

Venue: Room 405, 66-72 Gower Street, UCL