Design Accelerates blog №3 Acting faster
05.10.2020.
Why design accelerates impact for entrepreneurs
This blog contributes to an on-going debate about the role design can play in the Healthy Ageing agenda. John Mathers and Julian Grice are embedding design thinking in the UKRI Healthy Ageing Challenge and share insights on how design accelerates innovation, increases adoption and creates value for product and service providers. And in the challenging times our population is facing it’s increasingly important that as we age, we age healthily.
Our older population has changed from being a minor segment to be ignored to become a hugely important and vibrant part of our economy. The Healthy Ageing Challenge is leading the UK’s biggest transformation in the lives of older people, funding a raft of innovative projects.
In a series of three Design Acceleration blogs we examine the impact of the pandemic on the healthy ageing challenge, emerging shifts in consumer behaviour and ways entrepreneurs can generate value from design thinking.
Your feedback will shape the UK’s healthy ageing agenda, so if you’d like to participate in our quest to co-design a healthy ageing accelerator email John at john.mathers2@btopenworld.com
Acting faster
In our first two ‘Design Accelerates’ blogs, Thinking Bigger (23.08.20) and Innovating Together (16.09.20) we took a snapshot of how the pandemic has exacerbated healthy ageing challenges; highlighted emerging opportunities for entrepreneurs and innovators; and explored why collaboration between entrepreneurs and designers is vital to social and commercial success.
Now we’re looking at the role design can play in changing attitudes, answering the right questions, understanding the right needs and aspirations. We are at a tipping point in this market and this an ideal opportunity to develop a Design Age Accelerator — bringing together a growing cohort of healthy ageing entrepreneurs, innovators and investors with the expanding community of healthy ageing-aware designers and service users.
The ambition of the Accelerator is to address head on, the under-valuing and low investment in user-centred design by businesses, by connecting solution providers with the UK’s world leading user-centred design skills and resources. The aim is to increase the scale of adoption and investability of innovative and disruptive solutions to meet the growing demands of this market.
In this blog we will explore what we see as three fundamental challenges in this market:
1. How can we change deeply embedded attitudes to age, in the same way we have with climate change?
2. Why design thinking needs to reflect user-centred AND market-centred needs equally?
3. What ‘problem’ are we trying to solve for people?
Along the way we’ve asked the views of some of our Design Age Accelerator advisory panel members, including George Clarke, Architect, TV Presenter, Founder of MOBIE, a charity fostering and inspiring new talent and thinking in creating homes, Colum Lowe — CEO, Design Age Institute and Professor Lynne Corner, Director, VOICE at the UKs National Innovation Centre for Ageing.
So, firstly, can attitudes to ageism change as they have with climate change?
First climate change, now ageism
1. How can we change deeply embedded attitudes to age, in the same way we have with climate change?
Spotted the elephant in the room? Ageism.
Ageism is bad for individuals and bad for society. It means that people potentially limit themselves in how much they can enjoy their longer lives and the activities they do. It also means that we limit our ability to capture the opportunities which this market is increasingly opening up.
So, how do we change attitudes to ageism and what can we learn from climate change?
Well first up, climate change has Greta.
Source: yourstory.com 2019
Greta Thunberg has become the face of the growing youth movement demanding global climate action. The climate activist who started ‘Fridays for Future’ school strikes in Sweden has turned global, demanding governments to take drastic measures to cut back on carbon emissions.
Greta’s speech at the UN Climate Summit was emotive and daring. She took on world leaders. “I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet, you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. Yet, I am one of the lucky ones. People are suffering.”
So, are society’s views on ageing so entrenched that they can’t be changed?
We start ageing the moment we’re conceived. So why does the word ‘ageing’ carry so many negative connotations?”
We know just how ageist UK society has become … and, interestingly, it’s not the same in other countries. In Italy 40% of the population will be over 60 by 2040 up from 29% today, generations live together and grandparents are very much seen as active participants in the economic cycle, performing essential duties to keep families functioning effectively and efficiently.
Japan recently announced that the number of people aged 100 or older has exceeded 80,000 for the first time, 88% are women, and by 2040 25% of breadwinners will be over 75. No wonder their businesses work hard to give older people meaningful jobs.
In the UK a particularly negative ageing stereotype has emerged. We talk about ‘older people’ rather than ‘older adults’. They are seen as a burden on society. The image is that people enter their 60’s, retire and wait to die. This negative mindset deters entrepreneurs from developing ideas for older people, puts off designers from designing for all generations and discourages investors who are wooed by more alluring tech sectors such as Edtech, Adtech and PropTech. But as we’ve explored in blogs 1 and 2 the need is huge and the market is growing exponentially.
DESIGNER VIEW. George Clarke, Architect, TV Presenter, Founder of MOBIE, a charity fostering and inspiring new talent and thinking in creating homes:
We must tackle Ageism now. Covid has given us a once in a lifetime opportunity to think about where and how we live. Let’s use this moment to completely rethink the way we create homes and communities, start planning properly for changes in life-stage and create places where we can all — because we are all going to be there one day — live, longer, better and independently. And now is the time for ACTION.
Does ageism need an army of Greta’s to change opinion?
One voice won’t do the job but fortunately there’s a growing band of activist out there with powerful views such as Independent Age.
Institutional ageism means many of us are guilty, without even realising we are doing it. Try looking at it from an older person’s perspective.
“We have yet to acknowledge ageism. People say to me in the street, “oh come on young lady”. They mean it kindly but I always tell them, “no, I am an old woman, I’m 71”. I challenge it because of what it means underneath. What it’s saying is that being old is something detrimental. It’s as if being old is a condition to be ashamed of. Like being mixed race or disabled — these are just part of the whole, neither good nor bad.”
“You wouldn’t say to someone, “You don’t look as if you’re gay”. You wouldn’t dream of it! That would be offensive. You wouldn’t say, “You don’t look mixed race, you could pass!” You wouldn’t say to someone in a wheelchair, “I’m sure you don’t really need that — you look too well!”
Sling the ageing lexicon on the jargon bonfire
The UK media is the leading culprit in shaping ageist views — tabloid shorthand and soundbite headlines are the result of an obsession with short attention spans and low-brow lazy messages.
When the media has the opportunity to change perceptions it reverts to type. A recent Channel 4 show investigated opportunities to address the UK’s housing crisis with a social experiment in which youngsters meet pensioners over speed dates and, depending on how it goes, move in. A fabulous idea of generation chemistry, but what did they call it?
Lodgers with Codgers
“Liam, 19, gets a taste of independence with Flo, 83. Londoner Nicole heads to Hastings to live with Claudine and Ted. Poet Marvell leaves east London to lodge with retired couple Lynne and John in their converted Glastonbury chapel. In Birmingham, Sophie cohabits with no-nonsense pensioner Eunice. How do the different generations get along?”
Source: Lodgers with codgers, Channel 4 2020
In a battle for ratings that demands three words stand out in the listings the old get labelled as codgers. And it’s not exactly complimentary.
Codger Dictionary definition: originates from coffin dodger — men who had fallen on hard times and resorted to any means possible to keep body and soul together, too old to find work. A grizzled character wanting to steal from you; a peculiar and unfashionable old man.
Why are older people such a bad idea?
Take the evergreen world of advertising where supposedly only millennials can sell snake oil to unwitting clients desperate to attract young customers for life.
WPP boss Mark Reed, recently caused a furore amongst the more mature in the ad media world by proudly claiming that the majority of his employees are under thirty … “We have a very broad range of skills, and if you look at our people — the average age of someone who works at WPP is less than 30 — they don’t hark back to the 1980s, luckily.”Perhaps not surprising large consumer segments with cash are confused about ads. He has, of course, subsequently apologised profusely.
Designers have a key role to play in developing a positive language that doesn’t perpetuate the negative stereotypes and stigma. Design Age Accelerator could start with powerful brand builders like WPP. And other influential lobby groups are on the case.
Tackling Ageism
The Centre for Ageing Better’s Tackling Ageism campaign is championing the problem, challenging ageist and negative language, culture and practices. Ageism is bad for individuals and bad for society. It means that people potentially limit themselves in how much they can enjoy their longer lives and the activities they do.
How can we shift the conversation to one which celebrates and recognises the successes and benefits of an ageing population?
We need to start with our youngest generation … with children in school and college, through the way we teach and the things we teach. Take the design industry for example. In under ten years designers have emerged from design courses with environmental sustainability and the green net zero agenda at the very top of their priority list.
Try a heavy rubber suit for size
When John Mathers was Head of Design at Safeway he took young designers into stores — “we dressed them up in heavy rubber suits and gave them masks to replicate challenging eye conditions and sent them away with a shopping list. We then work-shopped the results and saw an amazing transformation in the way they thought about who their customer was and what they needed from information on packaging. There’s no better way of imaging older consumers world than literally walking in their shoes and then when you design with an older person in mind then you design better for everyone.”
Business Coalition for a Healthier Nation
Today, those students need to apply the same priority to ageing as the tectonic plates are shifting, spurred on by the pandemic.
Announced by Matt Hancock in February 2020 the Business Coalition for a Healthier Nation has been established to incentivise socially-responsible business practices for health, including the development of a possible index to measure contribution to the nation’s health.
Source: APDGI & Longevity UK Health of the National 2020
Tina Woods, Founder of Collider Health, Co-Founder Longevity International and leading the debate for a healthier nation is a prime mover behind the Coalition: “Health is where the climate change agenda was 10 years ago. Businesses involved in the Business Coalition for a Healthier Nation argue we should be guiding investment and innovation decisions by Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) mandates like we do for climate change, applying them to healthy life expectancy and societal health; institutional investors should be thinking about the stranded asset risk of things that cause health risks, and businesses should report on health risks like they are doing increasingly on climate issues. Crucially, Coalition leaders say we need to prioritize capital for large-scale, long-term, sustainable investment in preventative health.”
Entrepreneurs exiting ageism
Businesses providing products and services for inter-generational audiences have a huge responsibility in shaping the views of older people. The Design Age Accelerator has been hearing the views of entrepreneurs large and small and here’s two at different ends of the spectrum. Saga — the ‘grandfather’ of ageing services, and FX health — a disruptive young nephew.
A corporate Saga
Essential viewing for entrepreneurs, designers and commissioners in the ageing market is the recent Centre for Ageing Better webinar. Nick Stace, Chief Strategy Officer at Saga asks 193 friends to keep a relative secret — how to flip a 70-year old brand on its head and bust age myths.
“One of my proudest moments was influencing, over twenty years ago, a change in in ageism in advertising — no longer are you allowed to say ‘older people need not apply’ … but it’s a shame that perceptions about age have still not shifted”
Nick Stace, Saga Rob Lewis FLX Health
Start-up FLX Health
Rob Lewis is an entrepreneur disrupting the market with a digital pain relief service aimed at all generations but of particular value to older adults. Rob challenges customers’ views of ageing, reminding people that some of the biggest stars were young too and now more active than they ever have been.
“We need to overcome the ageism barrier that’s systemic in society. One challenge is that people don’t want to buy products for old people because they don’t want to admit they’re getting old, while well designed products aimed at an older market are actually thru-life products for many different user groups.”
Source: Rob Lewis FLX Health
Adding life to years, not years to life
Ollie Hart is a Sheffield GP and lead for physical activity for NHS Sheffield who uses the phrase “adding life to years, not years to life” — a sentiment that addresses the graph below. Living proof that there’s a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs and innovators like Rob Lewis to provide solutions for the 45–75 year-old Good Lifers where maintaining activity and independence is so important to their later life.
EveryAGE Counts
In Australia there’s a powerful advocacy campaign aimed at tackling ageism against older people that spells out the problem powerfully.
“Ageism is not benign or harmless. It is a big problem because it impacts on our confidence, quality of life, job prospects, health, and control over life decisions. It is pervasive but often hidden. It can distort our attitudes to older people and ageing and have profound negative impacts on our personal experience of growing older.
The impacts of ageism can prevent or limit us from contributing and participating in our communities — socially, economically and as full citizens — and even impact our physical health and longevity. As well as its individual impacts, ageism can also deny society the enormous range of benefits that can flow, economically and socially, from the full participation of older people.”
Take the ageism test — are you ageist? https://www.everyagecounts.org.au/take_the_quiz
Last word — Giving age a makeover
It’s the responsibility of entrepreneurs, investors and designers to build a positive ageing movement and demonstrate that ageing is positive, affects everyone and can be a rewarding and joyful experience. The Design Age Accelerator intends to do its bit, with the help of Mick, Macca and friends. One of our friends took on the challenge of giving age a makeover that’s been adopted by the Healthy Ageing Challenge and symbolises our Healthy Ageing by Design campaign.
Source: NB Studios
https://nbstudio.co.uk/what-if/age-got-a-makeover-1
Alan Dye, Co-founder NB Studios: “There’s a British roadsign that features a silhouette of a stooping elderly couple with a walking stick. it’s a depressing image: not simply out of touch but offensive. So, we decided to act and challenged the design community to change the image of ageing. The response was overwhelming — over 200 designs submitted from artists, illustrators and designers ranging from Milton Glaser to Oliviero Toscani.”
User centred AND market centred
Why design thinking needs to reflect user-centred AND market-centred needs equally?
Design is the glue that brings entrepreneurs and customers together to solve problems and the rocket fuel that boosts innovation. Design thinking is a proven methodology that accelerates innovation, delivers higher performance and will enable people to age healthily and live longer better lives through increasing the effectiveness of products and services.
To profit from design it needs to be used in the right way and design investors should think hard about four themes that I want to take a quick look at;
1. Purpose — what am I using design for?
2. Culture — am I going to let design influence the culture of my organisation?
3. Leadership — do I want design to lead or follow change?
4. Systems — how do I use design in a systemic way to change behaviour?
1/ Purpose — what am I using design for?
Design thinking needs to equally reflect both user-centred and market-centred needs.
User-centred design has been championed as the future but there’s much more to it than letting users tell entrepreneurs what they want. This isn’t about focus-group designed solutions. It’s the role of designers to allow people to muse, to imagine and dream and then interpret the ideas with a focus on marketability.
There’s a growing view that the pendulum has swung too far to a place where user-centred design thinking has become a high-gloss superficial exercise in re-packaging research.
Start-ups with pockets bulging with VC funding are falling hook, line and sinker for cool Shoreditch studios brimming with twenty-something MBA grads who have never ventured out of E4 to Rhonda, Redditch or Rotherham. Have designers drunk too much their own user-centred Coolaid? Where’s the masterstroke of genius that Stark, Olins or Arad would have provided?
Design thinking is not a panacea and will only work hard for entrepreneurs if market forces are equally listened to. The key is to use people carefully and design with a clear commercial purpose.
Purpose-centred design
Users haven’t taken over the asylum, but designers have let them in. Innovators mustn’t forget that user centred design must be balanced with market-centred design. So, where’s the middle ground?
DESIGNER VIEW Joel Bailey, Director, Experience Lead Transformation at EY Seren describes a more measured world as “Purpose-centred” design. Drawing on the Human Signals report, his research into the human impact of Covid-19 reveals the changing face of consumption, the recovery of lost compassion and empathy and the impact that will have for our future and the transition into new models of working worlds.
The thinking has been realised in a series of persona’s designed to dig into the shifts and patterns of post-pandemic behaviour.
Source: EY Seren
Joel Bailey: “The human impact of C19 has been tragic, yet the human response to it has been inspiring. People instinctively asked “how can I help” in a way that they didn’t before. CEOs found themselves on daily calls putting themselves in the service of frontline teams, effectively flipping the organisational structure. Changes that would have taken years before took days, as people worked tirelessly from spare rooms in service of what mattered — other people, inside their organisations and outside. None of this was designed. It’s just what needed to happen. But every organisation now wants to bottle this spirit of service.”
2/ Culture — am I going to let design influence the culture of my organisation?
A 2018 McKinsey study into design, frequently referenced on these pages, identifies that design has the most impact when embedded in the culture of an organisation. This is not without its challenges but the payoffs are significant.
“Top-quartile companies make user-centric design everyone’s responsibility, not a siloed function. In the tired caricature of traditional design departments, a group of tattooed and aloof people operate under the radar, cut off from the rest of the organization. Considered renegades or mavericks by their colleagues, these employees (in the caricature) guard access to their ideas, complaining that they have too often been burned by narrow-minded engineering or marketing heads unwilling to (or incapable of) realizing the designers’ grand visions”.
“Our research suggests that overcoming isolationist tendencies is extremely valuable. One of the strongest correlations we uncovered linked top financial performers and companies that said they could break down functional silos and integrate designers with other functions. This was particularly notable in consumer-packaged-goods (CPG) businesses, where respondents from companies that were top-quartile integrators reported compound annual growth rates some seven percentage points above those that were weakest in this respect.”
The four themes of good design described below form the basis of the McKinsey Design Index (MDI), which rates companies by how strong they are at design and how that links up with the financial performance of each company.
Source: McKinsey Design
3/ Leadership — do I want design to lead or follow change?
Many fast growth start-ups are founded by innovators and designers. John Maeda, influential design thought leader and author of Design in Tech reports since 2015, has highlighted the growing importance of designers at tech giants like Google and Facebook, the growth of design acquisitions by global consultancies including Accenture and McKinsey, and the surge in design-led start-ups that have secured major venture capital.
Maeda pinpoints that in 2015, 20% of the top 25 venture-backed start-ups had designer co-founders and by 2016 this had leapt to 36%. One in 10 Fortune 100 firms makes design an executive priority declaring: “Design isn’t just about beauty; it’s about market relevance and meaningful results.”
Source: John Maeda Design in Tech reports (2016)
4/ Systems — how do I use design in a systemic way to change behaviour?
To embed design into system thinking UKRI encourages the design double diamond approach in their newly published Design and Innovation strategic plan 2020–24.
“Many companies applying to Innovate UK for grant funding do so when their project has already reached the centre point of the double-diamond process shown below. Their proposals are often about overcoming technical challenges to realise a predefined idea. If they have already carried out robust ‘discover and define’ activities, there should be no issues. But, if they haven’t, there is a risk that people-related problems will surface later, when they are expensive and time-consuming to correct.”
Source: UKRI Design and Innovation strategy 2020–24
So, have you thought about the questions and are you sure about your answers?
1. Purpose — what am I using design for?
2. Culture — am I going to let design influence the culture of my organisation?
3. Leadership — do I want design to lead or follow change?
4. Systems — how do I use design in a systemic way to change behaviour?
The Design Age Accelerator will aim is act as catalyst to advise and support organisations to fully understand and apply design principles and practice so that entrepreneurs and commissioners can decide on the blend of purpose, culture, leadership and systems that suits their situation.
Last word
Colum Lowe, CEO of the Design Age Institute, former NHS Head of Design and Design Age Accelerator advisor puts it very well:
“I don’t think there is any doubt that systemic ageism is part of everyday life in the UK, from poorly conceived signage and lazy stereotyping in the media to being overlooked for job opportunities, ageism is everywhere. Research tells us that this stereotyping perpetuates the myth that older people have reduced cognitive and physical ability, are less willing to engage in social activity and have a lower ability to recover from disease, and while this might be true for some, it is certainly not true for the vast majority. These myths affect how all older people are treated by others, it affects their health, and ultimately it negatively impacts the length and quality of their lives.*
To combat systemic ageism we need systemic behaviour change, or what we once called in the NHS when we were fighting superbugs, a multi-nodal social marketing campaign that starts with a full and deep understanding of all stakeholders, or put simply, Design Thinking. Design Thinking is naturally systemic, inclusive and consultative, it draws together all parts of the machine to create a holistic view of the whole problem, and then proposes a whole solution. And we need to start this journey now, not simply for financial reasons, or because it is the right thing to do, but because it is us, not them, we are designing for. We will all, if we are lucky enough, age and grow old, and if we don’t sort it now we will all experience ageism first hand, and life is difficult enough without adding that burden to the load.”
* Journal Of Geriatrics, Volume 2015, Article ID 954027, Stereotypes Of Aging, Rylee A. Dionigi
Designers don’t just love problems
What ‘problem’ are we trying to solve for people?
Solving the right problem is a big question for ageing market investors, inventors and innovators. And so too, is exploiting the right opportunity.
Too often designers are given the wrong brief in the Healthy Ageing market along the lines of how do we solve a problem? Rather than, what are the aspirations of the people we are talking to … how could we make their life better and more fulfilling?
Jo Barnard, founder of award-winning industrial design firm Morrama says the “the first thing we ask a client is does this product need to exist? Is there a business there or a market for it? It’s not our job to increase landfill.” Brave but essential.
AgeTech big bet
AgeTech is the fast-growing market where entrepreneurs with tech and funding to burn risk racing into development and market and crashing. Because they didn’t invest in user-centred design.
Agetech hasn’t been spotted as a big bet yet looking at Beauhurst’s recent Accelerator review that highlights the gap in accelerator support.
Source: Beauhurst accelerator report 2020
“Each accelerator is unique, operating in different markets and providing an assortment of perks and benefits. By far the most common of these is mentoring, where founders receive one-to-one support, advice and training. Of all active accelerators, 84% provide this perk.
“Nimble accelerators should continuously evolve to stay relevant — from specialising in a particular stage of growth of the start-up process to entering emerging markets, and focusing on partnerships with corporations.”Startupbootcamp, Accelerating the UK
Where’s the Agetech Accelerator
Beauhurst spells out why Agetech isn’t on the radar. The most common buzzwords associated with accelerator programmes are artificial intelligence and fintech. Companies operating within these spaces get a lot of attention from investors and, consequently, the media. There are now a number of programmes in place specifically catered to these verticals.
But watch out, AgeTech is coming fast and is where Fintech was 10 years ago according to Alistair Grieg at 4Gen Ventures. “By our estimates the global Age-tech market will double from $1 to $2 trillion. Right now, we estimate that VC-backed Age-tech revenue is about $2 billion/year in the US. By 2025, we believe that this could grow to $35b, and that it will be across a broad range of categories, including care but far broader.
There is a clear opportunity to provide design support to help the disruptors and pioneers navigate uncharted territory, collaborating with established think tanks like Helen Hamlyn, Design Council and Centre for Ageing Better, new players such as Design Age Institute and Innovation catalysts like UKRI, KTN and the Catapult network.
That’s why we’re developing a Design Age Accelerator prototype funded by UKRI to test the market and step in the gap. To qualify our hunch, we’re embarking on a six-month prototype co-design project to establish the market potential and soft market test a value proposition.
Three things are front of mind as we embark on this process. Look out for brilliance. Build on what’s out there. Connect our friends.
Look out for brilliance
Deep in the Accelerator discovery process we’re talking to amazing people with a vested interest, the sharpest minds and an unreal passion. We’ll share these from time to time and here’s one to get started.
Focus on older peoples’ Superpowers. Clara and Adrian Westaway, co-founders of Special Projects love designing for older people. Their ‘Out of the Box’ project for Samsung highlights why design can make all the difference by solving the right problem. As Adrian explains: “the most important thing Samsung bought from us was — don’t make a new phone, just explain your existing one better.”
The video tells the story. https://specialprojects.studio/project/out-of-the-box/
Source: Special Projects
“To discover what was hindering people’s interaction with smart phones we first created an unconventional research journey that involved field visits to homes across Europe, workshops featuring magic tricks and hands-on activities (e.g. asking our participants to “draw” their mobile phones on a banana, using coloured pencils and stickers, gave us a really good idea of people’s aspirations in relation to mobile technology).
This immersive research journey enabled us to draw knowledge from their everyday experience, picking up contextual cues about their mental models and observing how these models guided their attitude towards mobile technology. Interestingly, the word ‘technology’ was not brought up at all in conversations, because it was “a scary topic”, so we chatted about magic and aspirations instead.
What hindered people’s regular interaction with mobile phones, we found out, was not their age, or their presumed lack of technological skills, but the clumsiness of the phones’ manuals. The poor design and encrypted terminology discouraged them from even trying to set up their mobile phones. Books, on the other hand were a very familiar and preferred way of learning new skills.”
Build on what’s out there
John Mathers, one of the Design Age Accelerator project leaders and Chair of the British Design Fund, was part of the team which commissioned Transform Ageing in 2016 when he was CEO of the Design Council. It’s projects and organanisations like this that we will be learning from and supporting.
Source: Design Council, Transform Ageing report 2020
Transform Ageing was funded by The National Lottery Community Fund, and led by Design Council, UnLtd (the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs), the South West Academic Health Science Network (SW AHSN), and the Centre for Ageing Better. The programme ran in Cornwall, Devon, Torbay, and Somerset from 2017–2020 and was supported locally by local delivery organisations.
Transform Ageing has brought about tangible benefits for people in later life. Through access to new products and services designed to meet their specific needs, it has reduced social isolation and people involved are healthier, happier and more connected. It establishes valuable benchmarks for specific Design Age Accelerator projects.
· Greater choice for people — On a fundamental level, older people in the South West now have a greater choice of products and services available to them. The six innovation briefs led to a diverse range of responses that cater for people with different needs.
· Expanding networks — Transform Ageing helped people in later life to meet new people and expand their networks. In the words of one participant “It (Transform Ageing) gave me an insight into people that perhaps I would have not come across in my normal circle of people and contacts”.
· Boost to local economy — The programme supported 62 social entrepreneurs and created a new market of non-statutory products and services that contributes to the local economy and have employed many local people. And with 46% of the programme’s initiatives led by people aged over 50, it has boosted employment for people in later life and changed mindsets around work for this group.
· Change in perception — The programme helped social entrepreneurs and commissioners see people in later life as assets, rather than a group that needs providing for. It’s an important message that underlines the positive effect the programme had on everyone who took part. 89,501beneficiaries were engaged by ventures through their work.
· New skills and networks — When surveyed, 57% of social entrepreneurs who responded said they had made new connections that have helped them develop their social enterprise. Most felt better equipped at identifying (71%), accessing (71%) and creating (50%) relevant network.
Rt Hon Paul Burstow, former Minister of State for Care “This programme has the potential to deliver new, scalable and sustainable solutions that meet the needs and aspirations of our ageing communities across the UK.”
Connect our friends
So, look out for the Design Age Accelerator ident. This is the first project from the ‘Healthy Ageing by Design’ campaign with design for ageing specialist, Future Public. Whenever you spot the link join in — we’d love to hear from you — whether you have a personal interest, a story to tell or a bone to pick — the bigger the debate the better the idea.
Through the Healthy Ageing by Design blog and community we will continue to showcase opportunities for design-led innovation, encouraging an active conversation between stakeholders, entrepreneurs and designers to engage the market and stimulate demand.
And look out for more debate on future blogs and at forthcoming Brand Finance and Age2.0 events.
Very last word
Lynne Corner — Professor Lynne Corner, Director, VOICE at the UKs National Innovation Centre for Ageing and Design Age Accelerator advisor and older population champion:
“Our purpose is to identify what the needs of an older population are … but also the aspirations. We see a great deal of grey, dull projects coming through the system and our job is to help people think differently, about how we can bring really exciting products and services to help people, across their life course, age really well. And we’re not just about ‘old’ people — on our panel of over 10,000 the age range is from 6 to 104 … and increasingly across all communities … and not just designing for the wealthy and already healthy.”
What next?
Sprint from hypothesis to prototype
The Design Age Accelerator is funded by UKRI and supported by the Healthy Ageing Challenge, with a single-minded vision. To help people live longer, better lives through inspirational and effective design.
Between September 2020 and January 2021 we aim to co-design a prototype service with users and entrepreneurs to prove out a demand-led hypothesis for a healthy ageing design service for business. The prototype will examine and develop a value proposition including the need for:
· a pioneer community of ‘age informed’ designers to advise solution providers
· facilitated access to ‘expert users’ to enable solution providers to create higher performing products and services
· a digital-platform proposition connecting a design-for-ageing community to commissioners
Your involvement will shape the UK’s healthy ageing agenda, so if you’d like to participate in our quest to co-design a heathy ageing accelerator email John at john.mathers2@btinternet.com
https://www.linkedin.com/company/healthy-ageing-by-design/
Entrepreneurs see opportunities. Designers understand users. Together they can accelerate impact.
John Mathers and Julian Grice advise the UKRI Healthy Ageing Challenge, review projects and help organisations capitalise on user-centred design thinking to accelerate innovation, increase adoption and create value for product and service providers to drive growth.
For more information and advice about your Healthy Ageing by Design project contact John or Julian:john.mathers2@btinternet.com or julianmpgrice@gmail.com
For more about the Design Age Accelerator
https://www.linkedin.com/company/healthy-ageing-by-design/
Future Public: https://www.futurepublic.org/
Learn more at:
https://yourstory.com/herstory/2019/09/motivational-quotes-climate-activist-greta-thunberg
https://www.ageing-better.org.uk/events/decade-healthy-ageing-tackling-ageism
Voice Network — https://www.voice-global.org/
https://appg-longevity.org/events-publications
https://www.everyagecounts.org.au/take_the_quiz
For more about brilliant designers:
EY Seren — https://www.ey-seren.com/2020/04/30/how-human-behaviour-is-changing-during-c19/
NB studios — https://nbstudio.co.uk/
https://nbstudio.co.uk/what-if/age-got-a-makeover-1
Morrama — https://www.morrama.com/
Special Projects — https://specialprojects.studio/
For more about design and growth:
Beauhurst — https://www.beauhurst.com/accelerating-the-uk/
Design Council Transform Ageing https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/what-we-do/transform-ageing
Helen Hamlyn Centre — https://www.rca.ac.uk/research-innovation/research-centres/helen-hamlyn-centre/
Design Age institute — https://www.ageing.ox.ac.uk/blog/leveraging-design-expertise-for-an-ageing-society%20
https://www.rca.ac.uk/research-innovation/research-centres/design-age-institute/
UKRI are committed to embedding design into all the Grand Challenges. For more information about UKRI’s Design strategy visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/innovate-uk-launches-four-year-design-strategy
For information and advice about UKRI’s Healthy Ageing Challenge visit: https://www.ukri.org/innovation/industrial-strategy-challenge-fund/healthy-ageing/
If you are interested in contributing to the Healthy Ageing by Design debate then we would like to hear from you — whether you have a personal interest, a story to tell or a bone to pick — the bigger the debate the better. Se
