How do the social, familial, and intimate lives of people 65 and older change as they age, and what difficulties can arise?
Duration: 10 Weeks
Project: Field Studies + Research
Team: Nolan K, Jonnie N, Kyle H
Aging & Social Transitions
Secondary Research + Initial Directions
My initial role of this project was to create a proposal on what we would be further researching throughout the quarter. Our only parameters were to research older people 65+.
After discussing each of our findings we came to an agreement to focus our attention on intimacy and relationships, both romantic and platonic, between older people.
In order to help us with our primary research, we created a study guide to help direct our interviews and cultural probes. In our study guide we included our recruitment strategy, facilitation guide, consent form, stakeholder map, and guided storytelling. Finally we led a debrief on what we learned from our participants.
Primary Research
After gathering all of our data from our interviews and cultural probes, we began transcribing and coding our data. We found common themes within our data. After much thought, our main themes were, fostering life-long relationships, establishing new connections, and adjusting to new problems with intimacy. Under these themes we found insights to support our findings.
Synthesis + Coding
Postcards and stakeholder maps from the field.
Ideation and thought process.
Coding done in google sheets.
Printed Sketchbook
-
![]()
Cover
-
![]()
Table of Contents
-
![]()
Intro + Secondary Research
-
![]()
Research Question + Design Principles
-
![]()
Initial Sketches
-
![]()
Fostering Life-long Relationships
-
![]()
Fostering Cont. + Adjusting to New Problems With Intimacy
-
![]()
Adjusting Cont.
-
![]()
Establishing New Connections
-
![]()
Establishing Cont. + Conclusion
-
![]()
Thank You
Project Summary
Throughout this project my roles varied during the different phases of our research, synthesis, and proposal. During the interview and research phase I conducted interviews as well as developed research questions and cultural probes. As my team and I moved into data synthesis and organization, which included organizing and creating transcripts from our interviews. I also led coding of our data which developed into creating common themes and insights, ultimately forming our design principles. During the speculative sketching and finalizing our workbook phase, I was in charge of sketching and conceptualizing initial drafts based off of our design principles. Further I led a participant feedback report which gathered new insights which translated into our finalized sketches. While working on our workbook, I led our design language as well as compiling all of the data we received. I’d finally like to thank my teammates Kyle and Jonnie for the amazing work we did this quarter.
The goal of this project was to gather information, synthesize collected data, and translate it into meaningful design in the form of a conceptual workbook. Through this course we were asked to form a research question based off of secondary research we found on older people and their relationships with others, both intimate and platonic. From there we conducted interviews following our study guide that my team and I created and presented our participants with cultural probes. These probes consisted of a photo study and stakeholder map to garner more data on older people and their relationships with family, friends, and the surrounding community. After synthesizing all of our data we designed a collection of speculative sketches to respond to our design challenge and principles we gathered from the data. Finally, we narrowed down our speculative sketches and presented it in a conceptual workbook to our peers and guests.