A Storytelling-based Approach to Designing for the Needs of Ageing People

Abstract

Identifying users’ needs is the basis of many design methodologies centred around a problem-solution approach. Ageist views of designers and older adult users themselves, however, negatively affect the use of existing methods for identifying their needs. In this paper, we describe an alternative approach to designing for older adults’ needs based on storytelling. We introduce a method which uses a set of visual cards to allow older adult participants to tell their stories in co-design workshops. These stories can then be used to identify their needs.