Visual Brief Re-worked

VISUAL BRIEF DRAFT - GENERATION SEGREGATION

Audience:

Lonely elderly people who are struggling to connect with others, especially youth, on a day to day basis and feel extremely isolated. 

In order to connect the elderly with younger generations we are also targeting youth to actively engage with elderly people and build intergenerational relationships.

Existing Situation: 

Elderly people are often lonely and isolated due to the passing away of friends/partners causing a lack of social interaction. There is also often a divide between the elderly and younger generations which can augment the feeling of loneliness. Since the daily lives of the youth and the elderly often don't cross paths, there is often little interaction between the two generations.

Desired Action & Outcome: 

Getting elderly people re-engaged and re-established as valued members of our communities and provide them with opportunities to connect and engage with youth. Idealistically these intergenerational relationships will not only improve the daily mental well-being of the elderly but will also provide the youth with new experiences and build new relationships….

Current barrier or opportunity: 

There is a level of shame and embarrassment surrounded by expressing that you are lonely. Many feel it is either their own fault or a reflection of their families unwillingness, or inability, to care enough for them. This stigma creates a significant barrier that isolates the individual and develops a barrier to seeking help. There could be an opportunity for different generations to find common interest in an attempt to harbour organic relationships which are easier to maintain. 

“How Might We…”: 

Develop some type of interactive exercise that creates more opportunities and motivates intergenerational relationships which are maintainable and beneficial for both parties? 

Motivate the elderly audience to actively engage in an intergenerational activity?

Help make elderly feel like valued members of society?

Encourage youth to willingly and consistently engage with the elderly? 

Client: 

Wellington City Mission 

Rest Homes in the Wellington Region.

Ministry of Health

Grey Power?

Precedents:

??

‘Five Ways to Wellbeing’: 

Connect, Give, Keep Learning

This project will develop an active engagement and connection, it will give both the elderly and the youth an opportunity to learn from each other. It encourages society to take notice of these issues and implement changes through community engagement.





We showed this brief to our peers and also Jason and received some feedback...

From the feedback, we have re-thought some areas...

• Get specific about the elderly audience...Are we talking about resthome elderly or living at home elderly, with a partner/without?
• We have chosen to focus on elderly living alone (without a spouse) at home as these people might be the most affected by loneliness. 
• Need to back up assumptions with references. 
• Rework the "how might we..." is too similar to desired outcome. 
• We can bulk out some points, have different paragraphs talking about different things. 
• For "precedents" would be good to look into cultures whose elderly are well looked after and live with younger generations. 

Visual brief draft

(1) Audience: Lonely elderly people who are struggling to connect with people, especially youth, on a day to day basis and feel extremely isolated. We are also in this sense, targeting youth to actively engage with elderly people and build intergenerational relationships.

(2) Existing Situation: As with getting old, elderly people begin to lose their mobility and friends/partners due to old age and illnesses. This can see them becoming isolated and trapped within the same daily routine. Since the younger generation's daily life often doesn't cross paths with the elderly's daily life, the two generations often don't interact. Seeing as the elderly often rely on these interacts for their daily social contact outside of the rest home or their home, their mental health is easily impacted negatively by little social contact. 

(3) Desired Action & Outcome: Getting elderly people re-engaged and re-established as valued members of our communities and provide them with opportunities to connect and engage with youth. Perhaps make them a bit more tech savvy so they are able to communicate with loved ones who are living in a different area.

(4) Current barrier or opportunity: There is a level of shame and embarrassment surrounded by expressing that you are lonely. Many feel it is either their own fault or a reflection of their families unwillingness, or inability, to care enough for them. This stigma creates a significant barrier that isolates the individual and develops a barrier to seeking help. The reasons people find themselves isolated are multi-faceted and therefore so too must be the solutions.

(5) “How Might We…”: Develop some type of exercise that encourages connecting elderly people with youth, this could be anything from a game, a cooking class…

(6) Client: Wellington City Mission & Rest Homes in the Wellington Region: Village at the Park (Newtown), Rita Angus (Kilbirne), Huntleigh (Karori) etc.

(7) Precedents: All ranges of age groups can be affected by loneliness, so perhaps a similar issue to explore could be loneliness in youth and the drastic suicide rates in New Zealand. In regards to elderly people, possible approaches to explore could be…

(8) ‘Five Ways to Wellbeing’: Connect, Give, Take Notice, Be Active, Keep Learning. This project will develop an active engagement and connection, it will give both the elderly and the youth an opportunity to learn from each other. It encourages society to take notice of these issues and implement changes through  community engagement.

Week2 Tuesday Homework

We created this newspaper headline inspired by the separation of the older and younger generations, who often don't interact on a regular basis. The headline "Generation Segregation" had a fun ring to it which would be attention-grabbing.

Everyone seemed interested in our idea and someone said that when they were at school they had a program in place where every week they would go to a rest home & do a new activity with the elderly people. They did earn credits for this course, but they felt they really connected with the elderly and learnt important skills from the experience. They also received gifts from the old people, such as knitted socks and baking and they still have the socks and feel they hold a sentimental value. Another student said that her grandparents have friends who can no longer write letters to their family, as they suffer from arthritis.

It's these personal stories which could really help in finding a specific direction for our research and topic.

Independent Research Friday

Broadly researching elderly peoples issues in NZ...

 There are a range of issues facing elderly people. Each could be the focus and direction of our research. Would need to research further into each one to determine which we would be most interested in or which is having the most impact on the elderly or which one we could help the most.

Friday Class

Lecture

Audience - hobbies, character, attitude, outlook on life, situation.

Existing situation - expand - explain why it's a bad thing - why should we care/invest time.

The desired outcome - Don't just create opposite of situation - how might it happen?

Current barrier - Get insights, what's stopping this from happening. Can you create an opportunity?

How might we... - Clarify - what needs to happen not how (the final product).

Client - provides context for the project. Who would want to fund this?

Precedents - Finding things that are interesting or potential links.

5 ways to wellbeing - Which ones are activated, where is the natural synergy?


Will produce a booklet at end of 4 weeks purely focusing on researching the issue rather than on the design solution.

Independent research Tuesday

Secondary research relating to Stress in the City

Low levels of face-to-face social contact can double depression risk...

Donnelly, Laura. “Low Levels of Face-to-Face Social Contact 'Can Double Depression Risk'.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 5 Oct. 2015, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11912255/Low-levels-of-face-to-face-social-contact-can-double-depression-risk.html.

• Links high levels of depression with lack of face-to-face contact.
• Face to face contact is often replaced by email, text and phone calls.
• Interesting to see that age played a part in how affected a person is. "...among adults aged 50 to 69, frequent face-to-face contact with friends reduced the risk of subsequent depression."
• "Among those aged 70 and over, contact with children and other family members had the greatest impact."

Would be interesting to look further into the mental health of those 70 and over as I have recently heard of issues regarding loneliness and depression in the elderly.

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/loneliness-is-as-bad-for-your-health-as-smoking-15-cigarettes-a-day/

• "The lack of mental stimulation also means that lonely people are 64 percent more likely to develop dementia." - Dementia and alzheimer's. 
• "Lonliness has been found to increase the chance of mortality by 26 percent, as well as increasing the risk of high blood pressure and obesity."
• "Patients who are isolated are more likely to visit the doctor, in part just to have human contact..." - very sad and surprising... elderly are so lonely they go out of their way to make an appointment just to have some face to face contact with another person.  

Design example in response to well-being.

Sara Lopez Ibanez developed a self-assessment kit that lets users figure out the kind of help they need, and where they can get it from. From all the information gathered from her research, she realised it was the initial communication between patients and their GPs that was a particularly difficult point. 

This design aids the communication between patient and doctor to make the experience less daunting and more impactful. 

Week 1 Tuesday Class

WEEK 1 TUESDAY

PREVENTION NOT TREATMENT. THRIVE NOT SURVIVE.

5 ways to wellbeing: 

Great holiday experience

Tallulah’s experience - surfing

• Connecting with nature
• Connecting with people/friends/the local community
• Keeping active and improving skills + working on goals.
• Living in and enjoying the moment, gratitude towards the oceans.

Could bring the satisfaction of connecting with nature into daily life.

My experience - white water rafting

• Connect - met new people of different cultures
• Trust in instructor/respect of others
• Active/Adrenalin Rush
• Living in the moment, actively listening

Could bring the idea of sharing skills and knowledge with others and learning from others into daily life.

READINGS

STRESS IN THE CITY