Designing for people you can’t meet: Persuasive design to nurture seniors’ participation in community services during the COVID-19 pandemic

AbstractDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, seniors were required to strictly isolate themselves, as the disease affects them disproportionately. Simultaneously, seniors had particular difficulty adjusting to the new reality because they had little experience using digital technologies. This paper presents a service design project implemented to alleviate the social isolation in senior homes during the pandemic. The team utilized a persuasive design strategy to create a six-step service design process with three cycles to nurture the participation of senior residents and facilitate coproduction. The outcome included technology education, communication channels, art events, and tools to support staff in continuing to coproduce the services.Keywords: Design for seniorsCOVID-19 and designservice designservice coproductionpersuasive designdesign for participation Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsMingzhu LiDr. Mingzhu Li is an associate professor in the Department of Industrial Design at Jiangsu University.Miso KimDr. Miso Kim is an associate professor in the Department of Art + Design at Northeastern University.Liqing HuangLiqing Huang is an associate professor in the Department of Industrial Design at Jiangsu University.Houjiang LiuHoujiang Liu is a design researcher at the Center for Design at Northeastern University.