Elders, wellbeing and Learning By Doing (1/2)
Part 1: The (big) question and interdisciplinarity
As part of the course “Learning By Doing” in the EdTech master in the CRI, I had the chance to put my brain to work around how to tackle big questions (and with big questions come big challenges). For me, the question sparked from a communication issue with my grandma and a later exploration revealed major global problematics that I could relate to the initial and personal one.
In this first part of a series of two articles, I would like to unfold the big questions I had to confront and highlight the importance of interdisciplinarity to tackle them. But if you are the impatient type, you can directly jump to Part 2 and learn about the design and prototype phase as well as why this project can be identified as a “Learning By Doing” project.
Hi Grandma
I have been living abroad for 4 years but my roots are in Barcelona, where my family lives. I am lucky to have a grandma with which I have a very good and caring relationship but since I left Barcelona we have trouble communicating. She knows how to use a “dumb” phone and take calls, although we would rather have a video call and see each other to feel we are closer…But my grandma has no computer skills, she barely knows how to use a regular phone and of course she is dependent on my parents to handle a video-call. Unhappy about it, I started asking myself some questions: could I create a device that would allow her and I to have a video-call? A device that would take into account her needs and limitations. And how would it look like?
Finding the answers to those questions is the mission I set myself.
I would like to dive you in the design process until I got to the answers and by the end of that process show you how the development of this project mapped with the aspects of a “Learning by Doing” project.
From Local to Global
It is obvious that I had in my hands a problem that I was facing from very close but, is this problematic just happening to me? Could this device help other elders communicate with their relatives? Maybe even with caregivers? What about people with reduced mobility? Is out there a broader problem than I am not aware of?
The answer to those questions is a rotund affirmation.
A very good place to start probing the scope of your mission is to try to base the core of it to one or more of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) defined by the UN: 17 goals exposing the big and most pressure problems humanity is facing.
The SDGs exploration made me realize that the problem could be found in the intersection of two of them: Good Health and Wellbeing and Reduced Inequalities.
Good Health and Wellbeing
“SDG Subgoal: By 2030, reduce by one third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being”
There are numerous studies and publications highlighting the problematics of isolation and loneliness for our health. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the world’s longest studies of adult life, showed that close and good quality relationships are the top reason for people to be happy over the years. Robert Waldinger, one of the author’s of the study and researcher, literally said “Loneliness kills. It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism”. Other studies have shown more negative health related issues to loneliness such as higher blood pressure, dementia and risky health behaviours like inactivity and smoking.
If we look at the statistics, the US Census Bureau reported that a quarter of man and nearly 46 percent of women over 75 live alone. We can assume similar data for other western societies.
Maybe the broader question here is: can we create better ways to help populations that are isolated due to age, dependency or disability to stay in touch with friends, relatives and even meet new people? The point is to create more and closer human connections.
Reduced Inequalities
“SDG Subgoal: By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status”
The access to technology, to internet and, therefore, to knowledge, is creating a digital divide in our world. The one having access have a substantial socioeconomic advantage from the ones who do not.
Even within western societies we can find that division, whether related to low-income or to the required computer literacy skills that give access to information and digital services.
As a society we would all benefit from an equal access to the Internet: from more connectivity, to collaboration, to access to services to ease our life. Elders are the most difficult group to include due to their low adoption pace and the pedagogical effort to motivate use and engage them in the learning phase. However, it is not all on them but also on the priorities of an IT market that targets the young and knowledgeable. Product design and development does not take into account the limitations of elders and therefore their access to those products is full of obstacles: small keyboards and screens, no high contrast interfaces and understanding of icons, to name a few. We could make a similar reasoning for those who have reduced mobility or physical disabilities and want to gain access to IT products which are not properly designed to satisfy their needs.
I would bring this problematic down to the question: can we design more democratic IT products to ease the access to the Internet and related services for populations underrepresented in the current IT market? As previously said, successfully tackling this question would mean to unleash the full potential of the Internet and create tech products where all members of the society are taking into account.
We have seen the motivation for a solution that goes beyond what I initially stated but we can also see that that motivation heavily relates with the narrow and personal one that I exposed. If we look again at each question formulated after unfolding each of the two SDGs, what we ideally want to come up with is a solution that:
- Connects populations in isolation risk with friends, families and potentially new people
- Meets the needs of those not having computer literacy skills and/or having cognitive and physical limitations to operate it.
About interdisciplinarity
You, the reader, can appreciate the complexity of the questions I made. There is no obvious solution and it would need the effort of knowledge coming from different disciplines to deeply understand the issue and deliver a sustainable solution from its design all the way to the implementation. Willing to solve big questions do not lie under the umbrella of any specific discipline or knowledge field but instead needs interdisciplinary super powers. You need to approach them holistically.
The problematic I stretched is well beyond my expertise to solve on my own, therefore the need to go beyond my current knowledge and reach to an ecosystem and/or individuals that could help me see, understand and implement the things I can not. The disciplines I think that are required to be able to answer the big questions I made are: education, social sciences, software engineering, design and psychology. Where could I find all that expert knowledge?
The ecosystem
I am currently studying at the Center of Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI), an institution fostering research in life, learning and digital science. In my class, I have people coming from everywhere in the world and with very diverse backgrounds. I am lucky to be able to approach peers, mentors, people coming from other studies within the CRI and the CRI staff. The CRI is a community of highly diverse humans where interdisciplinarity is at its core.
Thanks to my relation with the CRI I had the chance to have multiple conversations with other students and mentors but also to other people outside the CRI that helped me shape what I ended up building. It is very important to share your idea(s) with as many people as possible, even when they are blurry. In the first place because it probably starts a good conversation around an interesting topic and secondly because you gather very valuable inputs and feedback. That is especially true when the people you talk to come from different fields and countries, which enriches the angles from where you can see the idea or problematic.
However, sometimes (or many) you will appreciate the input of more knowledgeable people coming from the domains you need expertise. Then you will be looking for mentors and their experience which will come in help to validate your ideas and approaches on how to design a solution.
What’s next
At this point, I had a pretty clear frame on what direction to take but to be honest, I had no idea what exactly I was about to do. However, and without acknowledging it, that set the starting point of what would become my own learning path: once the ideas will start flowing, eventually, there would be a concrete and genuine one to work on, a user and technical research to do and finally a first prototype to bring to life.
You can imagine the amount of things I had to go through and learn by the end of that journey. But if you do not, let me explain it to you in the next article where I will talk about the concrete design I picked and its prototyping phase as well as how this project can be defined as a “Learning By Doing” project.
Pau is a master student at the EdTech Master at the CRI and a maker and developer interested in design, social causes and the way humans learn and document experiences.