Sparks of innovation: transforming challenges into opportunities

Mobility is one of the key criteria for older people to lead an independent life. Lack of mobility affects almost all quality indicators of life - social, health, and emotional wellbeing. An archival qualitative analysis of the Aging Concerns, Challenges, and Everyday Solution Strategies (ACCESS) database was conducted by a team of designers. ACCESS is an in-depth interview study capturing challenges faced by people aging with disabilities (i.e. mobility, vision, and hearing). In this study, we evaluated interview transcripts of older people with mobility disability sharing challenges they face in their day-to-day life, specifically focusing on transportation. Transportation has been identified as crucial to many aspects of health (e.g. getting to appointments, physical activity, social interaction, community participation).We hypothesized that ACCESS interview data may offer the design community (design researchers, design educators, and product developers) insights that are at times overlooked in health and aging related studies. We analysed the frequency and intensity of a range of challenges faced by older adults living long-term with a mobility disability. We used these data to identify gaps from a design research perspective and possible ways to convert these gaps into opportunities for innovation. This led us to develop a framework that shows how these challenges impact the wider community, regardless of disability. We conclude by discussing health research problems that can be relatively ill-defined and would benefit from design thinking inputs at both the planning and implementation stage.