By, Dennis Pilkey, NS GovLab fellow
Working with others through human-centered design is not new to me. I just didn’t call it that. After more than fifty years in a mixture of project management, business planning and program management, I have seen many processes that are similar but have different approaches, each with their own vocabulary. Innovation and prototyping have been around for a long time. I’ve been involved in many innovative projects and often used prototyping to introduce and evaluate new approaches for both large and small projects.
Any process is only as good as those who lead it. NS GovLab has been blessed with strong leaders heading up a talented co-creation team. They have recruited a diversity of people to participate in the first cohort for this social innovation lab. Meeting, working and sharing with them has been a worthwhile experience. Many different methods have been used to stimulate our creativity, along with structured notes and “post-its” to focus our thinking. The wide range of ages, backgrounds, experience and knowledge has sometimes been a challenge, but always a bonus. Everybody has worked hard to accommodate and understand the different perspectives that have been expressed throughout the fellowship.
Our team of six is working on developing an approach for seniors to age-in-place. We had a starting point — the success of the Energy Efficiency Home Evaluation program. Could it be adapted to a Seniors Aging-in-Place program? Some of our team believes that knowing your general direction helps in planning the trip but we need to avoid the trap of falling in love with a particular solution. We didn’t know how we would get there, or how winding the path might be- we are still working on it.
At the core of human-centered design is the premise that a single person or even a team of knowledgeable people do not have all the answers. It is imperative to carry out research centred on the people you are hoping to work with. In our case, talking to seniors was the next step. In addition, caregivers, health care professionals, organizations and contractors contributed to a broader perspective. From this we learned that there were many services, service gaps, reluctance to accept services, lack of knowledge about services, ageism, lack of empathy and lack of knowledge in delivering services. It is indeed a complex, multi-dimensioned world. Talking to people in the community, as well as looking for other best practices, added considerable detail to our collective knowledge and experience.
When people think of aging-in-place, they may assume it is in a person’s current home. It may not be possible for someone to live in the home or the place they are now in. There are many reasons for this such as health and inability to look after themselves, even with supports. Another issue facing aging-in-place is the pride seniors have in staying in their home as they age. Some seniors don’t want to admit they need assistance or are reluctant to include unattractive renovations for fear of devaluing their home or being stigmatized, e.g. special toilet seats. There needs to be a shift in attitudes towards recognizing that becoming older is not a bad thing. Seniors have a lot to contribute and have special needs that are not being met. We all need help, at all ages. Why is it so hard to ask, so hard to accept and so hard to find it?
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Dennis has been a long-time advocate and practitioner of evidence-informed planning. Recent consulting work has been focussed on supporting United Way of Halifax planning and programs as well as working with local non-profit organizations.
Dennis has a statistics-based website that includes a page that has a Seniors Focus as well as an Aging-in-place page that gives an overview of his involvement in NS GovLab.
