Click here to see the service outcome of this design process.

The core objective of this project was to explore the concept of "reframing" as a promising approach for addressing the complex challenges that are increasingly prevalent in today's world. We aimed to exemplify and discuss this approach through a comprehensive case study.

Our case study centered on the profound challenge of an aging population in Denmark, which has significant implications for age dependency ratios and labor shortages. To tackle this, we adopted an open design process structured around a recursive design framework that we co-created and powered by the practice of reframing.

The demographic changes that the Danish society is experiencing call for a redefinition of concepts like work, retirement, and elderliness; especially if we, Danish residents, strive to keep the current economic prosperity. With an increasingly higher proportion of retirees and an increasingly smaller proportion of citizens of working age, it is not only the welfare system or the pensions that will be affected, but rather the economy in general.

But how might we tip this situation in the right direction? Legislation is reactive: we citizens change and legislation reacts sooner or later. This means that the change towards new ways of ageing must start with us: with our conceptions and our beliefs, our mental models.

These reflections lead us to our problem question:

We started with extensive desktop research covering a range of topics, from the demographic challenges posed by an aging population to the Danish welfare system and alternative solutions for aging. This foundation was crucial for understanding the context and identifying the areas that required innovative solutions.

Desktop research on the following topics:

- The demographic challenge of an ageing population

- Ageing - a historic perspective

- Ageing today

- The Danish welfare system

- Existing alternative solutions for ageing

- The future of ageing

- The importance of young generations in ageing

We conducted in-depth expert interviews, mapping the mainstream perspectives in Danish society. These insights guided our understanding of the challenges and opportunities in addressing the aging population.​​​​​​​

Staging: Research the areas of expertise we needed insights from, and prepare the specific questions and exercises for each interview.

Co-creating and co-learning: Four in-depth interviews to map the mainstreams of Danish society.

Reframing: Analysis of the interviews and exercises, and plan for the next loop.

In the second loop, we focused on understanding how Millennials perceive life stages and social roles in today's context. We designed a survey and collected responses to gain further insights.​​​​​​​

Staging: set the goals for the survey, decide on the questions and create it on Google Forms.

Co-creating and co-learning: sharing the survey and gathering responses.

Reframing: analysis of the survey insights.

After loop 2, we carry out a session of Reframing where all the insights gathered until then (loop 1, 2, and literature review) come together and are applied to reformulate the problem of the project. It is then that the insights from loop 2 are activated.

After both loops, we engaged in a critical exercise of reframing, where we considered all insights gathered from interviews, surveys, and literature reviews. This reframing exercise played a pivotal role in refining the project's focus.

With a new research focus in hand, we moved on to the ideation phase. We conducted co-design sessions and workshops to develop service concepts aimed at intergenerational collaboration. This phase involved the application of design requirements extracted from the literature and multiple iterations.

Staging: preparation of two co-design sessions where we respectively ideated and developed service concepts.

Co-creation and co-learning: we held the sessions with 5 and 3 external participants respectively.

Reframing: it happened twice. Firstly, between the two workshops, where we developed the ideas from the first session by applying design requirements (extracted from the literature). Secondly, after both workshops, where we created the first version of the solution.

Following the co-creation sessions, we proceeded to test the concepts that emerged. This phase involved the preparation and execution of testing sessions with senior employees. These tests were crucial in fine-tuning our solution.

Staging: preparation of two separate testing sessions with two senior employees.

Co-creation and co-learning: we held two testing sessions.

Reframing: After each testing session, we iterated the design concept based on the insights gathered. Both tests helped us understand the target group better, and develop our solution.

The resulting research question was: How might we enable longer working lives by promoting intergenerational collaboration through tacit knowledge transfer in age-diverse corporate environments through an open design process?

The result of this project was the discovery of an opportunity – intergenerational collaboration – which delivers value to senior and young employees and companies. It centers around extending the working lives of senior employees by making them feel more valued in the workplace. Our service proposal focuses on tacit knowledge transfer through intergenerational collaboration, presenting a flexible value configuration for corporations with clearly defined roles for all stakeholders.

To see the service that emerged from this project as a solution for the case study, read: Intergenerational Collaboration: the service.

I was part of the design team, formed by three service designers. I participated in every phase of the project since we all were very involved.