The Day-to-Day Co-Production of Ageing in Place

We report findings from a study that set out to explore the experience of older people living with assisted living technologies and care services. We find that successful ‘ageing in place’ is socially and collaboratively accomplished – ‘co-produced’ – day-to-day by the efforts of older people, and t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Computer supported cooperative work 2014, Vol.23 (3), p.245-267
Main Authors: Procter, Rob, Greenhalgh, Trisha, Wherton, Joe, Sugarhood, Paul, Rouncefield, Mark, Hinder, Sue
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aging
Alignment
Computer aided instruction
Computer Science
Cooperative work
Customizing
Networks
Psychology
Social Sciences
User Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction
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Summary:We report findings from a study that set out to explore the experience of older people living with assisted living technologies and care services. We find that successful ‘ageing in place’ is socially and collaboratively accomplished – ‘co-produced’ – day-to-day by the efforts of older people, and their formal and informal networks of carers (e.g. family, friends, neighbours). First, we reveal how ‘bricolage’ allows care recipients and family members to customise assisted living technologies to individual needs. We argue that making customisation easier through better design must be part of making assisted living technologies ‘work’. Second, we draw attention to the importance of formal and informal carers establishing and maintaining mutual awareness of the older person’s circumstances day-to-day so they can act in a concerted and coordinated way when problems arise. Unfortunately, neither the design of most current assisted living technologies, nor the ways care services are typically configured, acknowledges these realities of ageing in place. We conclude that rather than more ‘advanced’ technologies, the success of ageing in place programmes will depend on effortful alignments in the technical, organisational and social configuration of support.
ISSN:0925-9724
1573-7551
DOI:10.1007/s10606-014-9202-5