Ageing Communities as Co-Designers for Social Innovation

This paper addresses ageing communities’ roles in social innovation. Two case studies are presented in the paper, with the aim to explore how ageing communities collaboratively work with stakeholders, including designers and other professionals, to develop new ser-vices and social innovation with the elderly. This paper uses a comparative study method for two projects with ageing communities in Europe and China. The first project, Life 2.0, focuses on generating ICT (information and communication technology) services for ageing individuals and groups across Europe. Another case study is the BoAi aged care facility in China that focused on the re-creation of their current food service systems. Insights and conclusions are presented to gain new understandings about the role of ageing people in their own service design needs and their roles as co-creators in new futures.