Learning for life: Designing for sustainability of tech-learning networks of older adults

Abstract

In today’s complex society we need to learn on a daily basis during our whole life, especially when it comes to new digital tools on which our lives are increasingly more dependent. However, the way digital tools are designed is not well adjusted to learning how to use these tools in the later part of life. As a result, many older adults struggle with the integration of digital tools into their daily lives. Recently, older adults started to be involved in design through sustainable participatory approaches. However, this group is very heterogeneous and characterised by varied needs that have to be addressed with a fitting approach that is currently missing in E/CSCW and participatory design.

In this workshop we therefore want to bring together researchers from different disciplines to develop new approaches that will help us to design for sustainable tech-learning networks of older adults. ECSCW and related participatory design approaches have a long history of collaboration with different disciplines. Our workshop hence addresses the issues of how we can better understand supporting learning for life of tech-communities of older adults from an interdisciplinary perspective in the context of sustainable participatory design. The workshop participants will therefore have an opportunity to learn about the challenges and opportunities related to learning for life of tech-communities of older adults in the context of sustainable participatory design as well as to reflect over their own disciplinary position in relation to this topic.