RSA Action for Age

This one’s a biggy – stick with me!

The Brief:

“Design a new service, network or other solution that would benefit older people experiencing, or venerable to, loneliness and isolation and that would help to improve their emotional and general wellbeing.”

This was my brief. To answer it, I needed to define what isolation is, and why people get to be that way. I found that isolation is caused by a gap between the quantity and quality of a persons relationships, often as a result of families moving away, or bereavement.

Due to the time restraints of this project, I was going to have to narrow down the term ‘older people’ to a far smaller age range, something between five and ten years. As well as improving isolation and loneliness among the older generation, I must incorporate a way of using their lifetime of knowledge by involving them in the community.

If older people are feeling isolated with their current situation, what things are already in place for them, but evidently aren’t working?

Existing Organisations

Before I could create my own solution, I had to investigate existing organisations designed for older people. I looked at many companies including Age Concern and Help the Aged, who help to provide funding and use their stature to front campaigns on issue effecting older people. I also looked for inspiration in design companies who target exclusively older audiences, like TGI50.

I also read a number of academic papers from the Psychology department at Wolverhampton University, on the subject of older people and their falling patterns.

From those organisations and reports, I came to the conclusion that as people get older, they have less people to depend upon, when they need it more than ever. So while caring for the older people is paramount, I believe that prevention is better than cure.  This solved my problem of a target age range. My focus would be on those who are just about to, or just have retired from full time work. These are people who’s lives have been full of activity and social surroundings, but now have the complete opposite ahead of them for the rest of their lives, and I think this is where the feelings of isolation first begin.

Interviews

To find out more information, I interviewed a couple, aged between 58 and 60, both of which are due to retire in the next few years.

I wanted to find out how they felt about retiring and if they had anything planned for when they finish their working life.

From the responses I got, they seemed very eager to retire, and looked forward to some time off. So maybe joining up to something new, wasn’t exactly what they were after? I continued questioning and found that they see this as the start of the rest of their lives, not the beginning of the end as some might think. They both seemed keen to start new things with their free time, as long as it was at their leisure. I felt like they wanted to be their own boss as much as possible, and being signed up to something may seem too permanent, and too similar to their working lives.

For me, this ruled out setting up some sort of retirement group. Gathering together a load of retired people in one place, just so they don’t gradually become lonely seems very forced, and the only type of people you would meet there, are the type of people that would enjoy going to that sort of scenario, which certainly wouldn’t cater for all judging by my interviews.

Outcomes

So my task now was to find a way of giving these retired people their new starts, without forcing it upon them. I needed a way to ask them “what have you always wanted to do, but never had time to?” instead of creating something they may not even enjoy, and forcing them to go. Not everyone will enjoy the same things. So I need a lot of different things, all in the same place, for people to choose which one suits them.

So what media should I use to present all these different suggestions? I looked around and found over five magazines dedicated to ‘What’s on’ in Birmingham. The problem with these magazines is that, even though they were free of charge, they were available in places where only the people who read the magazine are likely to go. The other problem with the magazine is how disorganised the information inside is. There would be pages of what gigs are on in one venue in Birmingham, but no other venues considered for another few pages. This is where I thought technology could help.

In my interviews I asked how regularly people of that age group used computers and the Internet, and I was surprised with how much they rely on them. Their generation may not have grown up with computers, but they are still very efficient with all the basic operations. This meant that I could set up something computer-based, which would make my content searchable, solving my problem.

Proposal

I am going to create a website dedicated to sourcing out activities, for retiring/retired people, to ensure they keep a strong social life once they have left work. My website will feature all current movies, numerous clubs, all live acts, including comedians and bands, and a forum where they can discuss what they have seen/would like to see, or anything else they like. All the films, live acts and clubs will have a rating out of 5 stars, which will be the average of everyone who has reviewed that particular event or club. Along side all listings will be relevant contact details, for booking tickets, getting to the location and asking any questions via phone, email or direct to their website. Because all the information will be stored in a database, it will be searchable. This means that a user can search for anything going on in their town, any film in the country, a certain live band and which cities they’ll be playing in a given week etc. The film times will be taken from all branches of cinema, so that you can compare all the times in your hometown on one page, instead of trawling through four or five websites.

I believe this outcome answers the brief well, and will be of great use to retired/retiring people as they begin to loose contact with their work-mates.

They have the option to join a club near them, that they may not have heard of, or they may just want to see what films are on that day, but it can all be done from this same website.