Well-being design for an aging society

Abstract

While population aging is an irreversible global challenge, this demo-graphic shift also brings a great opportunity to design innovation. For assisting older adults’ healthy and active aging, products and services should be adapted to their social identities and diverse well-being needs in their daily activities. This study addressed the question of how the integration of Science, Arts and Design (SAD) can contribute to design for older adults’ overall well-being. A case study of programs in Qiqihar University, Ming-Lab and Zhuhai of BIT was used to show how to transform design for older adults from SAD in design education to CHEER in design practices. Firstly, a review of the status of SAD was conducted. As multiple technology advances, many of aging problems can utilize SAD to cope with older adults’ daily problems and promote their quality of lives. The analysis of SAD enables us to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the current education systems in China as well as to discover further design trends. Then, the “CHEER” framework for well-being design is introduced that includes five main components: Collaboration, Humanity, Empathy, Ecology and Renaissance (CHEER). Each component give insight into what students could do to realize older adults’ well-being through their design proposals. Furthermore, this study presented several design proposals to outlines design features, merits and challenges of the “CHEER” framework. Together with the “CHEER” framework, this study is indented to offer inspiration for de-sign researchers and educationists to join forces in their endeavors to de-sign for older adults’ well-being.