Human-Centered System Design for an Aging Population: An Experimental Study of Footwear Design

Abstract

Population projections indicate that by 2050, people aged 65+ will account for 25% of the population in Europe and Northern America, and the number of people aged 80+ will triple to 426 million. With technological and biomedical advances, people now expect to live not only longer, but also better, demanding improved quality of living and working environments to support later adulthood. This new longevity presents opportunities for designers and engineers to engage in participatory, system-oriented design thinking and processes to meet the wants and needs of older users. This master thesis develops an innovative methodology to address the complex systemic social-technological design challenges that this new longevity presents and applies this technology to a novel case study, the design of indoor footwear for older adults.

We propose a Human-Centered System Design (HCSD) approach, combining Human-Centered Design (HCD) and Design Thinking (DT) with select System Engineering (SE) approaches and System Thinking (ST). The methodology was applied to a case study of designing and prototyping indoor footwear for older adults, following a process from inspiration to ideation and then to implementation. Data collected included targeted user and expert interviews coupled with surveys, and market research, as well as from the facilitation of two hybrid participatory workshops. We also used Ultra-Wideband (UWB) assistive technology and computational design tools to prototype future human-centered indoor footwear designs for older adults. We use four lenses to distill and synthesize the results: 1) people; 2) product; 3) platform; and 4) process. The proposed design solution considers not only people’s wants and needs, technological feasibility, and commercial viability, but also the adaptability, scalability, and novelty of using HCSD to solve these. Further, we examine the role of the HCSD framework and the participatory design process in contributing to the development of empathy and service tools in pursuit of an age-inclusive society. The study concludes with the proposed solutions including product design, service model, user experience, and technology, as well as a provisional set of design principles for future research on indoor footwear for an aging population.