IT IS YOUR TURN
Game Design
Facilitation
Human-Centered Design
MFA Design for Social Innovation
School of Visual Arts
New York, U.S.
May 2020
Personal Thesis Project
The Initial Problem - Aging
By 2050, one in five people will be 60 years or older, totalling 2 billion people worldwide.
Aging
Longer lives bring great opportunities, including the possibility of rethinking how
our entire life course might unfold. But these opportunities are very dependent on people maintaining good health into older age.
Unfortunately, evidence suggests that many older people today experience much poorer health than we know is possible. And for older adults with significant declines in capacity, supportive environmentsand integrated care systems can ensure that they live lives of dignity and continued personal growth1.
Aging perceptions can have powerful
implications for older people: it shows that when negative aging perceptions are implied they can discourage older individuals’ cognitive and physical functioning.
My Mission - Healthy Aging
Healthy Ageing is about creating the environments and opportunities that enable people to be and do what they value throughout their lives. Everybody can experience Healthy Ageing.
Diversity: There is no typical older person. Some 80-year-olds have levels of physical and mental
capacity that compare favourably with 30-year-olds. Others of the same age may require extensive
care and support for basic activities like dressing and eating. Policy should be framed to improve the functional ability of all older people, whether they are robust, care dependent or in between.
Inequity: A large proportion (approximately 75%) of the diversity in capacity and circumstance
observed in older age is the result of the cumulative impact of advantage and disadvantage across people’s lives.
Importantly, the relationships we have with our environments are shaped by factors such as the family we were born into, our sex, our ethnicity,
level of education and financial resources.
Target Audience
Elderly Chinese immigrants in NYC
Asian Americans are one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the U.S. Many of these immigrants are older adults.Chinese Americans are the largest group and also the oldest, with a long life expectancy.
There is limited research about Chinese American groups.
As Chinese Americans are immigrating into the U.S. in larger numbers, growing old and retiring in the U.S., understanding their life satisfaction could shed light on their quality of life, as well as inform policy makers and community organisations of future needs for social services.
Community
Selfhelp Innovation Senior Center
Selfhelp is one of the largest and most respected not-for-profit human service agencies in the New York metropolitan area, with 46 programs.
Selfhelp provides a broad set of services to more than 20,000 elderly, frail, and vulnerable New Yorkers each year. We are dedicated to maintaining the independence and dignity of seniors and at-risk populations through a spectrum of housing, home health care, and social services and will lead in applying new methods and technologies to address changing needs of its
community.
Problem Reframing
Spoken with lots of older adults in the senior center, I found common barriers among them is social participation, they lose contact with their friends/relatives, lack a supportive community, and described attempts to avoid social opportunities. This lack of capacity for older adults socially engaged in their communities which leads to a series of negative impacts of social isolation and loneliness.
Raising awareness of social engagement among older adults is critical to enhancing their wellbeing, improving health outcomes and motivating positive behavioral changes.
Stakeholders
Elderly Chinese Immigrants
Selfhelp Innovative Senior Center
Design Thinking
How might we create new ways to
motivate Elderly Chinese immigrants
to contribute to improving senior
center services?
For seniors: to have a space to formulate, express and share their
needs and plan better for their retirement life
For senior center: to better understand what kind of services their clients' (seniors) need
Intervention
IT IS YOUR TURN is an engagement board game combined with in-person feedback that motivates older Chinese immigrants to formulate, express and share their needs with experts in their local senior centers, and inspire the centers to improve their services.
Goal
The goal of this game is to bring open-ended conversations between older adults and the senior
center so that elders can build their capacity to contribute their own community and senior center can provide better services to their memberships.