At 92 years old, Fred Horley admits that he doesn’t get around quite as well as he used to. The former electronics engineer lives in Plymouth and relies on a mobility walker and scooter to get out and about. “My upper body strength is still good, but my lower body strength has gone,” he says. Recently, he put that upper body strength to good use, kayaking through the Antarctic with the help of virtual reality (VR). “It was an incredible experience. I was sitting in a chair, using my arms to get the paddles to work. The realism was extraordinary. I’d love to do it again.”
Horley was taking part in the Generating Older Active Lives Digitally (GOALD) project, run by the University of Plymouth’s Centre for Health Technology and the University of Stirling. The three-year project is investigating how to design and deliver digital resources to engage older people in activities that improve their health and wellbeing. The project has received government funding via the UK Research and Innovation Healthy Ageing Challenge programme, which has an overall mission of helping people to enjoy at least five additional healthy, independent years of life by 2035.
For most of the population, technology has infiltrated every part of our lives. But there is still a large subset of society that is excluded from realising its benefits. Across the UK, an estimated 3 million people are offline, more than two-thirds (67%) of them are 70 or over. Some of the barriers to digital inclusion are undoubtedly linked to location, a lack of broadband infrastructure, and economic factors, but, says Prof Ray Jones from the University of Plymouth, age outweighs them all.
“The main barriers to digital inclusion for older people are skills, knowledge, attitude and support,” he adds. “Some people have family members or neighbours who can help them but others are more isolated. There may also be institutional difficulties – some care homes still don’t have wifi, enough devices or IT-literate staff who can help residents. But one of the ways we can overcome a lot of these barriers is through better design.”
Since it began in March 2021, the GOALD project has worked with a number of small and medium-sized enterprises to create products, which have been tested by 190 participants from community groups and care homes across Cornwall, Devon and Scotland. These groups of testers, including some younger people to capture intergenerational opinions, are trying out technologies aimed at older adults. There were treadmills linked to VR to see whether the sense of exploring new places would encourage activity; online dance classes and yoga; a waterproof tablet to guide exercises in a swimming pool; sports reminiscence using feeds from sports heritage museums to encourage people to chat about those times; and audio reminiscence, where artificial intelligence is used to recreate sounds from a particular era or place, such as the beach or funfair. After testing a product, the participants fed back to the creators on the various benefits, barriers to use, and improvements that could be made.
“A lot of technology is designed in isolation, or developed by technologists who make assumptions about what end users might like,” says Dr Hannah Bradwell, a digital health research fellow on the GOALD project. “Co-creation isn’t common practice but it’s worth it because the result is a far more suitable product for the person it’s aimed at.”
Of course co-design isn’t without its challenges, not least because of the time involved. GOALD research associate Leonie Cooper says that the nine-month duration of testing helped the team build a real rapport with the participants. “How open and honest they were with us about the technology really changed. By the end of it, they had no problems telling us whatever they felt about the technology. They started to get more confident and were able to think outside the box. A lot of people might not expect an older person in a care home to want to experience jumping out of a plane through VR. But some do.”
Based on the feedback from the study, some of the companies have changed their products entirely. Bradwell points to one exercise solution that used a treadmill. After testing, GOALD members suggested it would be better targeted at those who were less mobile, and the product was reconfigured so the treadmill could be used by someone sitting down.
For older adults, seeing their feedback being used in this way has helped them realise their opinion matters, says Cooper, and the GOALD team has used the feedback to create toolkits for developers. They include everything from recommendations about the sort of content older people would like to see and the usability of certain hardware, to the best font size and length of content to use.
“There’s a bit of a stereotype around older adults not using technologies,” says Bradwell. “But from a business perspective, companies are missing out on a growing market. In the future, I hope that progress can be made on harnessing the capabilities of technology to support health and social care settings through co-design. That’s not just for older adults, but any group.”
Jones agrees: “If you’ve got older eyes, older ears, older fingers and an older brain, you won’t use a device or product in the same way as a younger person might. But good design doesn’t just have benefits for older users. A well-designed technology that works for older people should work for everybody.”
For the VR kayaker Fred Horley, being involved with GOALD has opened up his horizons, he says, and he now does a wellbeing class each week at a local sports centre. “The group aspect of GOALD was a real advantage. Even though VR is an individual experience, it was so fascinating that you wanted to talk to someone about it. We’re going to spend an afternoon on a world cruise soon – I can’t wait.”
Find out more about how the Generating Older Active Lives Digitally (GOALD) project at the University of Stirling and the University of Plymouth is helping older people stay healthier for longer.
Twitter: @GOALDStirPlym. Instagram: @goald_research or search GOALD on Facebook and LinkedIn.
SMEs interested in collaborating with the University of Plymouth can get in touch at goald@plymouth.ac.uk
