Last week, as part of our blog series exploring the story of prototyping aging in place, we took you back and shared a bit about The Route of Aging team’s journey. Today we want to continue on that journey. When we last left off, we had explored how the Route of Aging had begun imagining the possibilities of what a prototype supporting aging in place might look like (Step #4 from Prototyping, What is it?). From there, the idea of the Aging Hub was born and the prototyping journey continued…
The Aging Hub
The Aging Hub was an idea that represented both a physical and digital space for aging in place, where a number of roles could be housed together in one space and work collaboratively with one another. The Hub would have folks who worked as Navigators to connect seniors and their families to the services and supports offered by the public sector and private sector, that they would need to remain in their homes. It would also include folks working in Communication roles, Data people whose role it would be to understand and make sense of the met and unmet needs of older adults surfaced through the Hub, and Doer’s or people who were well poised to take action on the unmet needs by building new programs and services, filling gaps in services, problem solving and bringing policy issues to government.
Step #5: Mock it Up
The team also played around with Acting it Out by creating a role play of their idea. One of the team members developed Gert’s Story — a short 4 minute video that explains the journey of a rural senior, who experiences an injury and who might represent the type of citizen who would use the services of the Aging Hub. They recorded the story and played it for others to invoke a response. It was simply another way to get feedback and thoughts about their idea.
These different prototyping methods helped the group revisit their design challenge questions once again, and further clarify their concept before bringing their prototype to its first round of testing. As they zeroed in, they combined elements of their original design challenge with elements from their early prototyping efforts around navigation and guidance and asked:
“How might we evaluate how well people can age in place in their current homes and contexts and then guide their efforts to improving their situation?”
The team went on to generate another iteration of their prototype by Mocking-it Up and created an aging in place assessment framework that could be used to identify areas where folks might need some supports to be able to age in place and design the assessment framework so that it could be implemented in Phases (you can read more about this in detail in the team’s paper here)
The team also sketched out how they might promote and market this assessment approach and how they might launch additional in-person navigational support to help facilitate connection to services. All of this would be geared to helping seniors stay in or get out of their current homes, when they wanted and how they wanted.
Further work on this concept led the team to consider how they might develop a more comprehensive Aging in Place assessment that could be self-administered or administered by family or friends — perhaps using a smartphone app platform — that would also collect information about the types of needs being identified by its users. This information and data could then be fed back to organizations both within and outside of government who support seniors to better inform real-time needs based analyses.
Test & Iterate: Step #6
When it came time to Test and Get Feedback on this idea, the team presented the concept at their second prototyping workshop to a group of invited guests and then sat back and listened to the reviewers discuss their prototype among themselves. Although there was no physical or mocked-up app or set of questions for those reviewing to interact with, the prototyping team was asked to observe how folks reacted to their concept and make note of any questions or difficulties that folks had in understanding it. In the human centered design process, it’s critical that we remember that feedback is not just verbal. Also, having something tangible that folks can touch, experience or immerse themselves in is key to getting really good, realistic feedback from potential users.
The next time the team tested this idea out, they provided a more detailed outline of what the Aging in Place assessment would ask and invited feedback by email from a number of folks. Of those who responded, most were generally supportive of the idea or saw its potential usefulness. While they indicated they found the assessment comprehensive, they also wondered about the ability of a third-party assessor to make reasonable substantive judgements across a number of areas or domains like personal health or a senior’s home. A couple of folks also shared that they were unsure how someone in need of support would be matched to programs. The team began to wonder if the tool could identify needs and match resources for aging in place all in one process by combining the role of assessor and navigator into one role — a Senior Solutions Advisor.
Iterate, Iterate, Iterate
All in all, with a challenge as complex as aging in place, the team faced many unknowns and many possible paths. As they learned more and talked to more folks on their journey, they changed and adapted their focus over and over, iterating on old ideas and creating new paths along the way. They moved forward and sometimes back; they jumped around from concept to concept all while learning along the way. And on that journey, they were encouraged to focus on thinking boldly, on working to make their concepts and ideas real and on testing their ideas and assumptions early and often. This process — although not new to some in the group — certainly helped advance the concept to a place where NS GovLab staff were able to pick it up, build on to the team’s efforts and prototype an Aging in Place portal.
Thank you
The NS GovLab team would like to thank Dennis Pilkey, Stephen Amirault, Kenzie Finlayson-Buck, Aileen Nasager, Michele Banfield and Jon Kincade for all of their work and contributions to this prototyping journey. Their openness to sharing their learning process so that both our team and others can learn from the work and time they’ve contributed is invaluable. If you’re curious to learn more about what happened next, keep an eye on our Medium page for the next chapter in this story.
