Season 5: Re-imagine Elderly Centres

Silver Age DJ

Provide elderly members a new role as activity organiser, encourage them to keep building new knowledge and skills.

Partner for Action Project | Haven of Hope District Elderly Community Service (HoH DECS)

Design Consultant for Action Project | Wholly Wholly Ltd

Project Timeline        

Design Problems

At the initial stage of “Season 5: Reimagine Elderly Centres”, JCDISI has interviewed the staff and members of Haven of Hope District Elderly Community Service (hereafter referred to as “the Centre”) and defined relevant design problems with reference to the special background of the Centre.

•  Members hesitate to initiate self-organising activities

Past activities at the elderly centre were mainly staff-led with the purpose of offering services and activities for its members. However, in view of the gradual improvement in intellectual capacity and capabilities of the elderly members, they are no longer passive recipients of services, rather, they have a great potential to take a more proactive role in opinion sharing, group discussion and organisation of centre activities. The Centre is pleased to witness the self-organised activities from happening, it also hopes to take this as an opportunity to further encourage members to engage in organising and hosting centre activities. Unfortunately, couple concerns like scepticism against the centre’s stance, lack of understanding of administrative procedures, failure to reach consensus among members would hold members back from self-organising activities under the Centre’s framework.

• Encourage passive members to join the activities

Due to the lack of manpower and space at the centre, most activities have limited quotas. Based on the principle of fairness, most activities are based on drawing lots and first-come-first-served. The results of the interviews entail that the female members are generally more enthusiastic and responsive to the enrolment of activities, whilst male members tend to be more discreet and passive. The male members prefer having full knowledge of the activity contents and keen interests in such events or being persuaded by staff for multiple times before taking enrolments. Though a handful of male members would actively enrol in the activities they are interested in, they may soon lose interest once they fail to enrol successfully or identify any peers to attend the activities alongside with them, resulting in lower participation rate.

• The challenge to virtualise elderly services in the future

The staff of the Centre speculated that most elderlies would be familiar with digital technologies 10 years later, hence virtualising elderly services is the trend-setter. Staff needs to research how to maximise the benefits of using technologies to serve the elderlies, who have shown improvements in educational levels and capabilities over time. The Centre needs to also consider how to enable seamless connections between physical and online services in the manner that the elderlies could enjoy the services anytime anywhere, so as to meet the needs of the elderly and catch up with the pace of the society in the long run.

Design Point of View

After the initial interview with the members and staff of the Centre, we believe the Centre needs

• A solution that can facilitate members to organise activities on their own because this can help build connection among elders in the community and enable the centre to provide elders activities that suits their needs better; and
• A solution to raise the motivation of passive members, especially male members, to participate in activities because the existing registration system is discouraging them from registration.

Design Process / Outcome

During the Social Innovation Symposium, the two co-creation teams raised a proposed solution to their corresponding design challenge, which are (1) “The Forge for Event Organisers” and (2) “Finding Wolf”. Afterwards, the design consultant brought the discussion of combining the two solutions to the table, and examined the possibility of doing so. Since the Centre had successfully organised “Lai Fa Palace Night” music programme, the staff believe that many of the members are interested in music-related activities. Hence, the team decided to use DJ programme as the theme of Action Project.

“Silver Age DJ” Programme Overview

Under the impact of the pandemic, the centre was temporarily closed in early 2020 with limited service provision. Paying due regard to the suspension of ad hoc visits, the design team substituted the centre’s broadcasting system approach with the pre-recorded programme (“Music Friends of Tuesday”) production with 4 elderly hosts for streaming and listening by other members. After discussions, the design team and elderly hosts agreed with running this music programme on a bi-weekly basis at 30 minutes each. Since its launch on 23rd June 2020, the design team invited DJ, Ms Yip Wing Sze from Metro Broadcast Corporation Limited to provide recommendations for improvement based on the performance of the elderly hosts.

As the programme hosts became more familiar with the recording procedures, the centre invited one new female member to join as a hostess in September 2020. The design team organised four sessions of “I want to be a DJ” training in October 2020 and invited DJs Mr Wong Chi Chung and Ma Lau Mint from Metro Broadcast Corporation Limited to coach the elderly on broadcasting knowledge and technique. Once the training sessions were over, the centre staff then invited 6 enthusiastic elderly learners to join the “Music Friends of Tuesday” programme.

“Silver Age DJ Starter Kit“

The design team found that once the elderly hosts had received their audio microphones, they would identify themselves as specialists and engage more actively and enthusiastically in the audio process. The team believed that a starter kit given at the initial stage of the project would enable the elderly to participate fully.

The “Silver Age DJ Programme Starter Kit” is just a set of simple audio-recording devices, including a smartphone audio-recording microphone and a “Practical Guide for Silver Age DJ”. The practical guide focuses on the key points during the recording process, for example, rehearsals before recording, accurate articulations, dictions and pronunciations, together with an appropriate recording environment etc. With the given starter kit, the hosts could understand the points-to-note for recording.

The “Practical Guide for Silver Age DJ” points out the pre-recording points-to-note from the three aspects of “workflow”, “equipment”, and “personal (preparation)”. The elderly centre may consider these aspects when providing future suggestions for organising future activities.

• Workflow - The “workflow design” would break down the activity according to the timeline. A logical and smooth activity plan could be devised by carefully and pragmatically considering the relevant details in preparation and potential impacts. In case of non-audio-recording programmes to be brainstormed and prepared, say a hiking event, the workflow should consider the route, itinerary, transport and notifications for relatives etc.
• Equipment - Some specific resources and equipment should be prepared well ahead of all activities. For example, anti-slipper hiking shoes, adequate drinking water, walking stick and hiking hats are the resources and equipment needed for hiking. When we organise an event, we ought to discuss it with the elderly and develop a checklist for sharing among members.
• Personal – Organising activities usually touches upon some basic requirements or standard procedures. Adjustments on the activities may be needed for participants with different background and capabilities. Using hiking as an example to illustrate the personal requirement aspect, the elderly should be reminded to start with simple hiking trails, pay attention to their physical condition before taking further challenges. The elderly should also be reminded to stretch and relax their muscles after returning home from their journeys.

The design team hopes to apply the same concept behind the starter kit to activities led by other elderly centres. The relevant hardware and practical guide could both be incorporated into the starter kit to enhance the motivation of the elderly in participating in new activities. The practical guide may even include the QR code of online videos for the elderly to pick up new skills set via audio and visual learning on top of the written channel.

Observations on the Project Development and Results

Final Words

We believed that the “Music Friends of Tuesday” music programme had effectively raised the motivation and social participation of the elderly members. Whereas the “I will be DJ” training course had improved the knowledge and skills of the elderly. In addition, the whole programme of “Silver Age DJ” has also successfully pilot tested the model of co-creating activities with elderly, discovered factors that promote elderly to self-organise activities and benefits of adopting technologies and virtualisation on activities. We wish that these results can serve as a good reference for other future plans with the goal of “encouraging members to initiate self-organising activities”, thereby bringing the society closer to Active Ageing.

If you wish to know more about the project, please read our “Silver Age DJ Action Project Report”!