Social priming: Seniors co-designing digitally enhanced living spaces

The overall idea of the pre-project is to explore how social interaction amongst elderly and others can be promoted through novel design solutions, in which playful interactive technologies, physical living spaces, and people interact to form social arenas. Users of care and welfare centers will play an active role in the process of designing and reshaping these arenas. We develop a design framework, social priming, built on the idea that the shaping of social arenas is not a finite process, but that it takes place continuously as people, spaces and technologies interplay in ubiquitous computing environments. The framework will be used in the development of a prototype motivating spontaneous and meaningful social interaction. The pre-project builds on an established collaboration between SINTEF and the municipalities of Trondheim, Bjugn and Åfjord within the domain of welfare technology and health care services. Through the project we seek to prepare the ground for a future research project. We will actively involve potential industry partners. This includes ICT industry within smart technology, welfare technology, computer gaming in addition to industry within building and architecture.