Fostering co-UXers in later age: co-designing a UX toolkit for the senior online community miOne

Abstract

Over the past few years, an increasing dependence of the general population on information and communication technologies has been observed. As such, inclusive and age-friendly design has been of utmost importance to meet the context of every age cohort. Most of the software development projects tend to focus on the assumption relative to the users’ cognitive models, and when addressing senior citizens, these are very likely to have the risk of falling into stereotypes and non-used products. By contrast, involving senior citizens in the early stages of the design process tends to be crucial. The aim of this paper is to identify and validate a co-design process capable of influencing senior citizens’ experience in online communities. One of the elements of the co-design process that is described in the paper is a co-design toolkit to foster positive user experiences when interacting with online communities. The co- design process involved 36 adult learners from five Universities of the Third Age and 2 coordinators, organized into a set of 17 group sessions in the context of the miOne online community. Besides this co-design toolkit, a set of ‘best practices’ for involving the users in the co-design process and implications on the redesign of a Senior Online Community are proposed.