industry & reform ageing would be like in Australia , and vice versa . They were nearly all of a younger demographic , so their interpretation of ageing was as an observer if they had grandparents , or in the case of Singapore , many of the grandparents lived with them so they had more of that first-hand experience .
Many of them had a lot of preconceptions that were debunked during the tour , both between cultures and also within their own culture . They really hadn ’ t thought about what it ’ s like to age , and it was a really great way for them to get a true idea of the complexities , the issues , but also the great benefits of ageing and how they could actually make a difference in terms of designing solutions to some of the issues they saw in the care homes , but also creating new programmes and awareness for younger people to engage more with the ageing population in their countries .
Explain the concept of design thinking that was used in the workshops . Design thinking is a process has been around for a very long time . It ’ s embedded in all of our design disciplines , but it was never really extracted from the process and was never sold as a service at a design agency until the 1990s . The idea is that when designers have a problem , they go through an exploratory process of looking at all the different angles of the problem . And sometimes through that exploratory process , you find new issues that you need to deal with , or you find the true source of the pain points or an understanding of the end user . You continually prototype and test those prototypes until you get it right .
We wanted to bring nursing students into this process because they didn ’ t really feel attached to the design solutions that were embedded in , say , a hospital setting . If they experienced something like a bundle of cables that they had to navigate around , they never thought , ‘ Well , I could come up with a design solution to fix that .’ They just assumed it would be fixed by a spatial designer or a facilities manager .
When we started to introduce them to the design process , we said you can actually integrate the observations that you ’ re making on a daily basis within these spaces , and work with the designer on the ground level to come up with new solutions to that . So that was really important for particularly nursing students to realise that they actually have agency in a design process and that they ’ re not just the part of the end-user experience and they just have to accept whatever design has been given to them .
Could design thinking potentially provide a solution to attracting more workers and nurses to the aged care sector ? I think it still has a way to go , but we ’ re trying to integrate design thinking into the design and delivery of health services . For instance , I ’ m part of the Australian Association of Gerontology and I frequently go to their annual conference . When I first started going back in 2015 there weren ’ t any other designers and there wasn ’ t a design section at that conference , but now we have a whole section on design . I think it ’ s becoming more prevalent , that idea that designers should be working with healthcare practitioners and should be working within the sector instead of just as a client to come in and design something that ’ s detached from the end user .
I ’ m seeing it gain traction . We ’ ve got a project at the moment at QUT where we ’ re working with Queensland Health to help integrate these design processes into major hospital settings , small clinics , and looking at current and existing issues that they have and how we can come up with new solutions using design thinking . So I think it ’ s becoming more of a given instead of just a nice added extra , which is fantastic .
Do you believe design thinking can be used in the future to better improve experiences of ageing and allow different age demographics to collaborate ? I think it ’ s linked because we ’ re looking at the end user and their needs and wants , instead of just a broad understanding of ageing as a problem . Everyone has a different experience of ageing , even within a culture . When we take students on these trips , we bring those stereotypes to the forefront . So they assume that everybody wants to be gardening , for example . They have these kinds of assumptions . But what we do by talking to the end user and working directly with them is try to develop new ways to adjust the experience so that ageing doesn ’ t seem so scary to younger people , and also to an older person because a lot of the new digital technologies and services are designed
“ You can actually work with the designer on the ground level to come up with new solutions .
by younger people . It becomes really daunting .
So they start to become co-dependent when they actually want to have agency over their life . By bringing younger people and older people together , we ’ re saying : help design this service in a way that is not so scary or difficult to use for someone that has never engaged with it . Design it for them , with them , so then it becomes something they designed as opposed to something that was designed for them , and it ’ s easier for them to use and manage .
It can be something as simple as having to go into a bank when maybe the bank ’ s far away from you , or your local branch closes down and then you think , ‘ How am I going to do my banking ? I don ’ t know what I ’ m going to do .’ Then you can engage with that technology and its not so scary because you ’ ve actually worked together with the designer . The designer has really thought about how that end user is engaging with it . Those are the kinds of things we ’ re looking at and , how we can actually make this experience easier instead of a process of continual decline , a detachment from society , because you ’ re part of it , part of the design process , part of the new designs that are being involved and technologies that are supporting your lifestyle .
Singapore ’ s population is ageing more rapidly than ours , and it ’ s hitting a crunch point with them . So you see lots of people basically never being able to retire . They ’ re working until they die more or less . Many of our discussions in that context , and also particularly when we went on a trip to Japan , was about how we can actually empower people in that setting and also look at retraining people to deal with some of the complexities of aged care . Some of the solutions that we created in the Singapore tours involved looking at how younger and older people could live together in housing complexes where they ’ d have businesses together , they ’ d have services that would support each other . So they ’ re not just living there , they ’ re working there as well . ■
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