Intergenerational Relationships: an academic design project at the University of Aveiro

Abstract

This paper aims to show the design process of a project being developed by the 3rd year students of the Licenciatura in Design of the Universidade de Aveiro. The project is part of a wider challenge launched to all Portuguese Design Universities called “Action for Age”, an initiative of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) in partnership with Experimenta Design and sponsored by the Caloust Gulbenkian Foundation. This initiative intends to raise awareness amongst Portuguese young designers to the problematic of population ageing and its consequent social transformations, as well as to prompt reflections on Design’s contributions in this new framework. Hence, and using Strategic Design tools, it is intended to showcase new approaches to the process of project in design, focussing in Service Design, contributing towards the consolidation of an emerging field in the Design area. As brief, the students were asked to identify a place and design a solution that would stimulate intergenerational relationships. Following this research phase, students were prompted to define their own brief, which led them to develop flexible solutions: a service, a network, an environment, a structure, an infrastructure, an object, a shop, a function or initiative. The purpose was to conceive an integrated solution that could respond to the identified need of enhancing intergenerational relationships, resulting in better integration of the elderly, as well as other individuals, in the community. To kick off the project, students had to pinpoint all characteristics of the selected place and then proceed with the mapping of its ongoing activities. Those activities were regarded as social innovations, and as such their goal was to analyse them thoroughly and propose ways to perfect, strengthen and connect them.On a second phase, students were first engaged in scenarios’ building, which worked as a tool to facilitate a strategic discussion amongst the different stakeholders involved, and later designed the toolkits that would enable the implementation of those scenarios. The results of these projects will be presented, although the focus of this paper is more the process and tools used for their development.