Design for Care: How the “Good Old Days” can Empower Senior Residents to Achieve Better Services in an Aged-Care Institution

This article addresses the issue of care for the residents of the BoAi aged-care institution in China. It focuses on experience (service) design and institutional aged-care from the perspective of design practice and design research. Design often starts from the current experience of the user. In this article an understanding of senior care includes considerations for the senior residents’ experiences of the “good old days,” such as previous lifestyle, tradition, and filial piety in Asia. This means that elements of good memories and experiences of the past were transferred into the new service concepts that the project developed. Through the study at the BoAi home, current service experiences at the institution were investigated. For designers and design researchers working to increase senior care and service experiences, it is important to understand and distinguish between individual experiences. For the seniors it was meaningful to revert to their prior experiences. Therefore, the study of BoAi was approached through design ethnography. The article also suggests how care service experiences can be understood and classified in aged-care institutions. The aim of this article is to investigate how designers translate the prior experiences of seniors into action to affect intentional change for the promotion of better service experiences in aged-care.