Co-Design Research Group
Give & Take
People
Give&Take (2014-2017) designed an online platform that allows to exchange services and resources among senior in a reciprocal fashion. Unlike many existing social media platforms, this platform is designed to support existing, often loosely coupled communities in order to strengthen and sustain these communities, while simultaneously acknowledging privacy and accessibility concerns for users with low level of computer literacy.
The platform is designed based on a co-design process with senior communities and municipality employees, which enabled the idea to structure the sharing platform based on ‘the onion model’ where different roles or levels are defined (sharers, volunteers, coordinators) and a high level of emphasises is placed on the connection with an institution (a municipality). It allows for sharers, volunteers and the coordinators to all be present on the platform, with varying levels of access – and it gives the coordinators (e.g. social workers, health counsellors from public health centres and other people working with senior communities) the possibility to facilitate the groups and provide ‘a helping hand’ from a distance.
The trial version of the platform was tried out and explored through different living labs (based on different senior communities) established by the project group to explore the role of the platform in how sharing could potentially take place in the everyday life of senior communities – and to rehearse new practices of the senior citizens and the ‘coordinator’ to understand if and how it could be of value in their daily (work) life.
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