How Might We Design Behaviour Change to Prevent the Attrition of Employees and Enhancing the Quality of Life for Seniors?
Type of Work: Master Project
Time: January 2020 - August 2020
Collaboration Partner: The Home Help Department, Kolding Kommune, Denmark
Role: User Interviews | Field Studies | Infographic Design | Co-creation Workshop | Usability Test | System Mapping
WHAT?
Share IKIGAI service is designed to engage the seniors in an active community. It aims to improve the quality of life for senior citizens as well as the working conditions for home care staff.
HOW?
‘IKI’ as a system will free up some of the workloads for home care employees. ‘GAI’ is a communication tool to create a relationship between resourceful seniors and those who are less robust. Together, IKIGAI will activate the senior citizens and bring them closer to each other.
WHY?
Some senior citizens feel they lack resources and wish they had more contact – others are eager to contribute more. And the nursing staff is pressed for time. With IKIGAI, all the actors’ needs will be covered, whether it is to give or to receive care.
Let’s share IKIGAI together.
What makes elderly people happy and what is still valuable in their life?
It’s about creating a relationship between two people. For active elderly, they are aware of their ikigai while the inactive elderly need help to find it. Ikigai is an element for them to communicate and be connected.
Stay for 5 More Minutes
“When she eats dinner, she’s like that stay here for 5 minutes more, just 5 more minutes. And you just like to stay there for 10 more minutes already. No, I have to go. Please stay, and it’s just like hard broken. Yes, it is so hard because you just want to be there. And just to talk to them whatever but we don’t have the time!” (Home helper, 2019)
Content
Through my field study, I found out caregivers are lacking time, they don’t have enough time to care the elderly people, especially for social needs. For active elderly people, they are seeking their own value and have the purpose of life, they want to do more and want to help more people and be more social. I found the missing link between inactive elderly and caregivers is the active elderly people.
What’s Your Ikigai? Model By Marc Winn, 2014.
Combine IKIGAI Concept
In terms of Ikigai, it is a Japanese concept that means “a reason for being”. It refers to having a direction or purpose in life, that which makes one’s life worthwhile, and towards which an individual takes spontaneous and willing actions giving them satisfaction and a sense of meaning to life (García & Miralles, 2016).
By the inspiration of “Ikigai”, It is very important for elderly people who are active and willing to participate in social activities but are still struggling to find a way to enhance the quality of their everyday life.
Cultural Probe
Story behind the shape probe was used to collect participant stories and feedback during the prototyping. The ten prototypes seen as probes are inspired by six keywords which I analyzed by brainstorming map.
Without any explanation of what it is, I involved seven participants picking up one or two probes and leaving them in their homes for two days. In these two days, they write and draw their thoughts and stories on the post-it notes. After two days I interview them, aim to collect their stories behind the probes, and observe how they interact with these probes.
Co-creation Workshop
In order to explore how elderly people define “communication”, I conducted a co-creation workshop with them, especially the Tell-Make-Enact diagram (Sander et al., 2012) can empower elderly people to express their creativity.
Aa a trigger for the co-creation workshop, the story behind the shape probe opens the dialogue.
User Testing
Final Product
TANGIBLE ARTIFACT LEVEL
Communication tool_ Gai
It helps to create a constant relationship between both active and inactive elderly.
HOLISTIC STRUCTURE LEVEL
Service system_ Iki
A motivation for elderly people to find their purpose of life.
How it Works
The user journey map shows in detail how “iki“ service works. Different probes and artifacts are added between each touchpoint.
I’m looking for answers to create an active community around elderly people.
Reflection.
The biggest challenge for me is how to make two-way communication between two elderly people. Not just one person to help another.
The concept I found is about “IKIGAI“ from Japan. Let people build a relationship based on interesting matching.
The reason to focus on motivating another of elderly people who just get retired to build a relationship with inactive elderly is that both of them have a similar cultural context and they understand each other more.