This paper addresses a number of challenges HCI designers and researchers deal with when designing digital technologies for older people. We conducted a 5-year research-through-design study, which combined ethnography, participatory design and real-life evaluation, to explore the design and use of technologies aimed to enhance the social life of older people. The paper explores widespread assumptions about the social category of older people and the meaning of technologies for them. This paper argues that assuming that (i) older people have unique needs and interests that set them apart from other user groups and (ii) the meaning of technologies remains unaltered on completion of co-design activities are both problematic, because they do not consider carefully enough the sociocultural contexts in which older people interact and engage in their daily lives. The paper posits that the meaning of technologies for older people and their own identities as individuals of a certain age are shaped within situated communities. Thus, technologies designed 'for older people' should be designed to meet situated and dynamic needs/interests of the communities (and not only of care) to which they belong. We draw upon our findings and other situated epistemological discourses in HCI to introduce a different perspective, a turn to community, in the design of technologies for an ever-increasing ageing population.

Citizen science is challenging professional researchers and their organizations to rethink the way they do science and connect with society. In any citizen science project, professional researchers are "making a promise" to the public about the level of participation and power in decision making that they are willing to provide to citizen scientists. Researchers should set expectations explicitly to ensure informed participation, trust, and motivation. Also, the design of tools for informed consent, information sharing, recognition, and privacy has to be adapted to the new power relations and distributed knowledge production. Based on fieldwork experiences and literature review about environmental and biomedical citizen science, this article examines the challenges and proposes solutions for: 1) setting expectations for informed participation; 2) addressing privacy concerns and adapting informed consent to evolving interests and networked environments; and 3) promoting citizen governance of research data. Citizen science has the potential to both increase scientific literacy and counteract mistrust and skepticism about scientific evidence of global problems (such as climate change) that need to be addressed. However, there are still many challenges to fulfilling the promise of citizen science-for example, empowering people and gaining trust. A few inspiring initiatives help us reflect on a facilitation model for engagement and informed participation; privacy by design; and new governance models for research data provided by citizen scientists.

While older people tend to be regarded as actual, or potential, players of digital games within literature on game studies, human-computer interaction, and gerontechnology, they are also often considered nonavid users of digital technologies. This contradiction prompted us to conduct a literature review, which revealed (a) insufficient involvement of older people within the design of games targeted toward this group and (b) insufficient understanding of their everyday digital gameplay. In this article, we present the conceptualization, design, and evaluation of digital games that active older people found to be sufficiently appealing, playable, and meaningful. A 6-month ethnography of the play experiences of 170 older people helped us to conceptualize these games, which were codesigned through playful everyday activities. To facilitate the development of these games, we designed and evaluated an

No abstract

No abstract