Start Somewhere and Build on an Idea: Developing the Aging-in-Place Portal 1.0
By: Jenna Andrews & Rayna Preston
For the past little while, we’ve been sharing the journey, along with its twists, turns and learnings of building a prototype rooted in the question of “How might we?” Throughout this series, we have been exploring the complexities and multiple components that are inevitably wrapped up in the concept of Aging-in-Place (AIP). In The Design Squiggle & The Route of Aging: Part II, the last post of the series, we learned about the Route of Aging’s time at NS GovLab. We finished by sharing the creation of their Home Sweet Home paper, which documented the team’s ideas for a prototype.
This week, we want to share with you the next part of the AIP prototyping journey which takes us all the way back to Winter of 2018. Despite all the complexities around the concept of AIP and the assumptions we raised in the last post, there was still a desire to build out a prototype — a tangible thing — and test it with potential users. The Route of Aging team didn’t have any more time to build onto the ideas they had captured in their paper but with the team’s blessing, Jocelyn and Aubrie (the Staff at NS GovLab) took on the idea of building a prototype rooted in their ideas.
Taking a Piece of a Larger Idea
In our prototyping blog, we talked about how one of the key points of prototyping is taking something and making it real for people. But sometimes, our ideas can be so big, it can feel overwhelming to know where to begin. It can be easy to get caught up in the idea that you MUST build your whole idea or prototype isn’t worthwhile. If you find yourself feeling that way, it is important to remember that you don’t have to build the whole idea for a prototype to be useful. The intention is that you build something that can be tested with people to get feedback and learnings. One of the Lab’s guiding principles, “Start somewhere… go everywhere.” is a great reminder in this part of the journey.
When Jocelyn and Aubrie looked at the ideas in the Route of Aging paper, they focused on which part of the overall concept of an Aging Hub they could take and make real to test with the people it was intended to help. They settled on trying to build the assessment tool component because at the time the idea of connecting seniors to the resources they needed digitally was desirable. There was other work happening in this area that could be connected to the Route of Aging’s ideas to make a useful testing of a protoype possible. The Forum of Federal/Provincial/Territorial Ministers Responsible for Seniors at the Public Health Agency of Canada had put out a guide called Thinking about your future? Plan now to age in place, which provides a reflective checklist in PDF format. This provided Jocelyn and Aubrie a good foundation to begin building content and a web-based prototype with.
A screenshot of the “My Home” part of the Thinking about your future? Plan now to age in place tool published by the Federal/Provincial/Territorial Ministers Responsible for Seniors in 2015
Working with Others to Make AIP 1.0 Real
Sometimes when you’re prototyping you may recognize that you do not have the skills needed to build your prototype for testing. In this case, the prototype was going to take the form of a digital website and the NS GovLab team didn’t have in-house programmers or web designers. To help with the prototype, Jocelyn and Aubrie worked with Service Nova Scotia’s (SNS) Digital Service Design staff and a local web developer “We Us Them”, to build a website that could be used to test the concept. By collaborating with others they were able to combine their skills, knowledge and experience to make something real.
The result was The Aging in Place Portal 1.0 prototype. The first version of this prototype was a web-based tool that focused on prompting users to reflect on aging-in-place and what they might need to do as they grow older. The hope was that by prompting folks to think ahead, this would also get them thinking about how they might connect to potential resources in their community. The tool took users through a series of questions related to: Health, Connections, Home, Transportation, Finances, Community, Safety, Supports and Services, and My Partner and Me (if applicable). Once they had completed the questions, the user received a short summary back that showed them “how they did”. The intention of the short summary was to show areas where the user was prepared to age-in-place and areas that may need more reflection and planning.
A screenshot of an example of “How did you do “ results from the AIP 1.0 prototype
Next, the tool provided a space for users to write their own reflections related to these areas that they would like to work on and to make note of any actions they may want to take. The vision after this step was for a user to be connected to resources based on their responses. Given this was a prototype, the team decided to stop there and not include the resources in its build out for this prototype. Instead they focused on testing the merits of the idea, whether seniors and their families would find a tool like this useful, whether the idea worked in a digital format.
A screenshot of the Reflections page from the AIP 1.0 prototype
Testing & Feedback
One of the last steps we talked about in our prototyping blog was the importance of testing a prototype and to gather feedback. A lesson that NS GovLab frequently shares is that feedback is a gift, and it is up to us to choose how we approach and incorporate it.
We often think of feedback as just verbal, but reactions and how people interact with the prototype are also important types of feedback. To see what they could learn from this prototype about the concept of aging-in-place, Jocelyn and Aubrie set out to test it with a range of folks who may potentially interact or use the prototype. Working with others to test your prototype may be beneficial because sometimes no matter how much we hope to remain unbiased, we can unintentionally set up questions and presentation of our prototype in a way that doesn’t create space for testers to give their honest feedback. NS GovLab staff have often used The Mom Test as a good way to check in and make sure we present our prototypes in a way that gets honest feedback.
In the end, the team was able to test and gather feedback from three groups: older Nova Scotians thinking about aging in place, care providers for older Nova Scotians and family and friends of older Nova Scotians. Some of the feedback that the Lab received noted that:
- the volume of content in the Aging in Place website was overwhelming;
- that the website did not personalize the experience for the user; and
- most notably that the content and approach were heavily influenced by western colonial perspectives on what is needed and what is desired to age in place in a “healthy” way.
You can learn more about the broader feedback that was offered and how the Lab incorporated these learnings into its next iteration in Dive Into Prototyping: Aging in Place Portal 2.0 .
Have you had any insights on how best to gather feedback on your prototype? How do you ensure people tell you what they really feel, versus, what they might think you want to hear? Let us know your insights and reflections below and stay tuned as we share more about where we took AIP 1.0 over the past year!
