Aishwarya Iyengar
Service Designer, User Researcher & Design Educator
Design for Health care
Homeward Bound | Redesigning communication between families
Glimspses of the conversation tool created for older people and their families
The challenge
To set the social context for this project, let me start with showing you the bigger picture. People in the UK are living longer, i.e the number of people over the age of 65 is on the rise. For Scotland alone, it is estimated that the percentage of people aged 65 and over will increase by 62% by the year 2031 and the people aged over 85 and over will increase. However continuing the way health and social care is provided currently will be unsustainable in the future. With the increasing need for care and lack of availability of care professionals there is a high dependency on the family, friends and the community to step in to take on a significant role in a person's care.
Although it has been identified that older people would be supported by their informal carers to a large extent, it is also important to understand that the carers may have their own needs and wishes which need to be acknowledged. The carer often becomes a person who has to be 'giving' in the relationship and it can lead to having an impact on their mental and physical health.
To understand and foster this caring relationships, families need to have conversations about 'what is important to them' and what they would like to happen in the future. But these conversations are difficult and often avoided. Our challenge was to enable older people and their families have these conversations and have empathy for one another.
The approach
Talking with tools
During our research we spoke to several older people and carers with the support of 'visual tools'. Visual tools in this context, refers to something that enables people to represent their thoughts in a physical form through words, drawings or even models. We observed that tools are a useful medium to discuss high intensive subjects related to a person's life, that can be emotional and challenging in a one- to- one conversation.
As designers, it helped us better understand the person's life story and talk around specific topics wherever necessary. It gave people enough time to think and collect their thoughts as they were expressing them through words or drawings.
To see 'how' we used different tools, go to page 29 in the report
On further thought and feedback from people we interviewed, we concluded that visual prompts/ tools can be an engaging way of having conversations with people.
The output
We created a book called ‘My life book’ that is a collection of conversation prompts that would enable people to have meaningful conversations with each other. The book has four sections, People, Places, Work, rest and play and changing times. These conversation themes encourage people to have a choice as to ‘what’ they would like to talk about and ‘when’.
It was identified during research that there are documents that exist that attempt to prompt people to talk about their wishes, preferences to help make decisions for their later life. But these were not designed in a way that would make a person ‘want’ to share very personal, intimate and valuable parts of his/her life.
'My life book' is a fun and engaging way of giving people the much wanted freedom and opportunity to express their values and wants in a positive way. We developed this book by involving people through all the rounds of prototyping. We found that people willingly shared their personal stories and experiences with us and built a sense of trust between us.
The impact
It was reassuring to see how this conversation tool had an impact on people at an emotional level. The positive and visual approach lightened up people who engaged with it. There were many stories that people have heard a several times from each other but this brought to light why those experiences are important to the person.
As a subsequence of the positive response we received, My Life Book is being promoted by IRISS to make it available for use across health and social care organisations.