Voicing values: laying foundations for ageing people to participate in design

Abstract

This paper discusses Participatory Design workshops that sought to enable ageing people to articulate their core values in relation to their experiences of ageing. Our motivations were to better understand how ageing people decide whether or not to adopt and use particular technologies, and to gain insights into the kinds of technologies that might support their aspirations as they age. We contribute to current understandings of ageing people's values, including a range of values that were most important to our participants, insights into how these values are expressed and experienced in everyday lives, the inter-relatedness of values in action, and how the three social dimensions of self, friends and family, as well as community influence the expression of values. The workshops demonstrated how engaged ageing people are with others and the broader communities they inhabit. We reflect on the processes, methods and tools that were useful when supporting people to voice their values and how this approach can support the participation of ageing people in design.