Designing for Intergenerational Connection
A Conversation with Callie Thompson
We’re both more connected, and more isolated, than ever. Zoom has largely replaced the boardroom and the classroom. Twitter now serves as the center for business networking. When masking-up and venturing to the grocery store, or the pharmacy, we complete errands quickly, with minimal contact, trading curbside pickup and drive-thru for friendly conversations with cashiers or grocery clerks.
Older populations are especially impacted by the social and physical distancing necessary during Covid. Historically, this season marks a time for families to gather for the holidays, but traditions and patterns are being interrupted to keep elderly relatives healthy and safe. With 43% of American grandparents living more than 200 miles away from their grandchildren, it’s essential to make extra efforts toward staying connected and not falling “out of sight, out of mind.”
Yes, social distancing and gathering restrictions can help protect high-risk populations, but the fact remains — humans are pack animals — and the mental, emotional, and physical impact of isolation is real — and growing. A recent New York Times article reported that, “thousands of older people [are] stricken by another epidemic ravaging America’s nursing homes — an outbreak of loneliness, depression and atrophy fueled by the very lockdowns that were imposed to protect them from the coronavirus.” Without the visits with loved ones, the stories that activate long-term memories, and the physical touch of family members, many elders are deteriorating rapidly.
And this isn’t just an aging problem. Humans have developed empathy and complex social systems based largely on stories and relationships. Co-design, participatory design, and design research are more important than ever. To design for change we must fully understand people’s lives, motivations, the context of their decision making and communication needs in 2020’s “new normal.” This year also marks the 5th anniversary of the United Nations’ 17 SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), many of which require behavioural changes from individuals, organizations, and societies in order to succeed.
So, how do we use the power of design to create sustainable products and services that encourage human connection? I sat down with Callie Thompson, Director of Service Design & Design Research at Headspace, to talk about designing technology for multiple generations, how their needs differ, and the importance — for all of us — of putting elders at the center of the conversation.
Marico Fayre: How is Covid changing the use of technology for older populations?
Callie Thompson: “I think some people have gotten over their tech fears — because they’ve had to — since Covid is such a deep, isolating barrier. My grandfather, who’s 96, figured out how to use Zoom in order to have family calls on Sunday afternoons. We never did that before — but the four grandkids live all over the country, we usually don’t see each other except for Christmas, and these are such extenuating circumstances that it was enough for him to overcome the frustration and stress of learning how to use the platform in the first few Zooms. Now he knows how to use it, which is amazing.”
MF: With elders like your grandfather learning to interact with technology in new ways — even if it’s out of necessity — it sounds like there’s an opportunity to push ourselves to envision products and services that include elders in the conversation in new ways.
CT: “It would be really interesting to look at how we can use this newfound — for some people — willingness to use technology and turn that into a mechanism that allows an older person to become the one who is being listened to and paid attention to by everyone through video or audio.”
MF: Video calls are so prevalent in our daily lives, that makes a lot of sense. It also seems like there’s a larger barrier to entry for video, for many older folks, while an audio recording could be similar to talking on the phone. Tell us more about the audio approach.
CT: “I get obsessed with audio, it’s probably why I ended up at Headspace — an audio guided meditation app.There’s something about listening to a voice that helps you feel closer to that person when you don’t have a visual you make up your own mental imagery. In a way, you’ve involved yourself in the story already, you’ve internalized it because you’ve added your own mental imagery.”
MF: We’re losing so much: family history, generational knowledge, skills, and crafts from these older generations. Meanwhile, we’re seeing things like scratch baking and bread making returning to the spotlight with younger generations who’ve used Covid as a space to slow down and learn new skills — from home.
I wonder if there’s an opportunity for audio (or video) to help preserve the knowledge of skills and crafts that are slipping away as there’s more and more focus on technology.
CT: “Maybe there’s room for a podcast that shares those stories, similar to the Foxfire books in the 1970s, which were high-school students audio interviewing the elders in Appalachia and documenting how they did all of their crafts — how they made deeskin chairs, slaughtered pigs, made butter or yarn.”
MF: That would be an interesting approach! It sounds like a combination of the best YouTube tutorials with an old-fashioned radio hour. That reminds me of a few smaller organizations — like the Scottish Highland Woodturning Club or the Port Townsend School of Woodworking in Washington — that are teaching crafts like woodworking, albeit in person.
Why do you think it’s important to continue learning those traditional skills?
CT: “There’s an awesome Greek man who runs the Montana Clock Shop on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica. He’s an older craftsman and when you go into his shop it’s exactly what you would imagine — hundreds of clocks from floor to ceiling. I was picking up a clock there a few weeks ago and I asked him how he learned to do all of this so effortlessly, so elegantly, as if it’s nothing. He said he was always good with machines and when he was 10, he started apprenticing with a clockmaker in Greece. I wonder if anyone’s doing that anymore or if we’ll just become a disposable culture that throws out clocks and buys new ones because no one learns to fix them?
“There’s a great phrase in Vermont:
use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without.
“You repair your jeans or your bucket instead of getting something new. How do you take the best parts of history and make sure those survive — like the idea you should repair or restore things?”
MF: It sounds like Vermont deeply understands sustainable design, a design approach that’s becoming more prevalent in recent years.
Is there an example of how we could use a remote approach like video or audio to include elders directly in early education — and emphasize the importance of tangible craft and design in the school curriculum?
CT: “Think about all of the kids who have to go to school on Zoom right now. It would be so cool if instead of stressed out teachers with a digital classroom of 40 kids, there were breaks in the day where an elder gives a lesson, teaching the skills they have through an audio or video walkthrough. Maybe those are recorded and used at different schools.”
MF: The traditional educational model is shifting at all levels, and Covid is also giving us an opportunity to reexamine how we approach higher education and career growth. A short-term program like a design bootcamp or corporate curriculum for upskilling reminds me a little of the apprenticeship model you mentioned — people learning a niche skill set from experts and then going out and doing that work as their career.
You did something similar with Austin Center for Design (AC4D), a one-year program with working professionals, and in 2012, you and your cohort researched and prototyped a product that captured audio stories from elders.
Eight years later we’re still talking about the importance of sharing elders’ experiences — and how we can use technology to preserve these stories.
CT: “The thing that we were trying to solve, our theory of change, was to reincorporate older people into every generation’s culture. We were noticing this generational digital divide where, at the time, elders — people in their 80s and up — weren’t using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat. But their grandkids live so much of their lives online. They’re documenting everything and communicating with each other — and even communicating with their parents on Facebook or via text. There was a gap where older people were out in their own world, really isolated.
“Our concept, Spoak, was a collaborative storytelling experience. The older person took a photo of something in their home that has a memory or life story associated with it and we used that as an anchor or provocation to get a story going. Then they would talk about what it represented, like what happened on their wedding day, ‘your grandfather was so amazing and I remember the way that we danced,’ and then that recording was sent through a private network to the immediate family. Then the family would have the ability to respond and audio-comment back. Someone else adds what they remember, what was special about the day, and then you have this rich picture of a moment in time and the older person is brought into the center of that storytelling in a digital way.
“There was something really special about taking the time to articulate those memories and to know that life experience was valuable and meaningful. Knowing that your kids or your grandkids are interested in hearing your story, that they sincerely care and want to learn about the insights of that elder, that’s really important.”
MF: Relationships, craftsmanship, memory — it’s all connected. Beyond the personal or family context, why is it so crucial to document these stories?
CT: “One of the things we were looking at with Spoak was an externalized memory database. How do you give someone tools to document things that are important to them, for other people to listen to and learn from over time? We didn’t want to rely on the kids or grandkids to ask questions, but most older people have objects in their home that they’ve had for a long time, that are already associated with memories. In fact, a big tenet of aging in place is keeping people in their original context. If they go to a nursing home they often decline very rapidly and have a lot of health issues or dementia. How can we encourage people to stay in their own homes for as long as possible? Maybe part of it is more regular communication so their family knows they’re safe. And if they are in their own home, let’s use the memories that they’re already surrounded with as prompts for connection.”
MF: Hearing a different perspective from an elder, documenting these memories, could also provide important historical context. When we learn more, as individuals and as a culture, we often have more questions come up. Things we wouldn’t have known to ask about directly. Ruth Bader Ginsberg said, “dissent speaks to a future age.” In a way, you’re talking about preserving knowledge that we don’t even know we need — or that isn’t yet relevant.
CT: “My grandfather was a codebreaker in WWII and a coast guard afterward. He has really thoughtful perspectives that you can only have if you’ve seen that large a span of human history. How do we preserve those kinds of perspectives? The Long Now Foundation — run by Stewart Brand who had the Whole Earth Catalog — is doing an interesting job of that. Their whole mission is to enable long-term thinking and they’re building a 10,000-year self-sufficient clock in the mountains of West Texas. That means we have to design differently and think about what materials will last that long — we have to have long range thinking. We can’t just think about the now.
“Allowing people to truly learn from someone who has been on this planet for 80 or 90 years and has seen a lot of things — WWII, the great depression, 1950s America, the invention of plastics, the civil rights movement…you’re learning skills but also a long-range perspective.”
Stories have been one of humanity’s main teaching tools for thousands of years and through them we learn skills, ethics, family history, and empathy. If we’re going to survive with our sanity more or less intact, we need to focus on designing for human behavioral patterns and needs, intentionally creating new ways to build connections across miles — and between generations.
Read more about designing with empathy and creating successful, emotionally resonant products and services in “Wicked Problems: Building Empathy by Designing ‘With’” and “The Role of Design Strategy in Humanizing Technology.”
You can also learn more about the design research methods used at Austin Center for Design — and here at Modernist — in our video series with founder Jon Kolko:
