Cross-cultural Perspectives on Design for Healthy Ageing

The populations of Australia, Singapore, Japan, and many other countries in the Asia Pacific region are ageing. In the next few decades we will see up to half of the population in many countries represented by citizens over sixty-five. The impact of this change in population balance will be profound and it represents a potential global shift in design for society. This will challenge designers, planners, and health care professionals to develop solutions to better meet the needs and harness the capacity of our growing and diversifying populations of older citizens, in relation to housing, community interaction and co-operation, health and well-being, and the integration of new technologies. For the past four years we have been running cross-cultural design workshops around the topic of design for healthy ageing in China and Singapore. The workshop at the Ageing and Society conference brings together a group of cross-cultural educators from Australia, Japan, and China to talk about key issues associated with ageing and imagine the kinds of innovations that may be required to effectively manage this massive population shift. Different professional and cultural perspectives can be a means to create new ideas and approaches that provide a deeper understanding of the needs and capabilities of the global ageing population. This workshop will introduce methods to approach the challenges that lay ahead in supporting health, well-being, and community cohesion. After an initial briefing showing our process and some of the work we have done in this area we will then then invite participants to mix with cross-cultural teams from interdisciplinary backgrounds. We will bring them through a guided design thinking process that will assist them in applying this method to future projects and provide mentoring and support from our cross-cultural team of academics.