In the Winter and Spring Quarters of 2008, an interdisciplinary faculty team working with the Stanford d.school will create a class in which student teams develop innovative strategies and products to enhance mobility in seniors. The class will bring perspectives from Computer Science, Design, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Business, and Medicine to address the potential of people to maintain vitality and mobility as they age. Graduate, undergraduate and medical students from diverse backgrounds will work in multi-disciplinary teams to find novel ways to integrate computer and device technologies with behavioral and social interventions. Maintaining mobility is a critical component to successful aging. Impaired mobility can limit normal activities of daily living and lead to a loss of independence. For individuals who are already mobility impaired, or are at risk of becoming so, small improvements in functional capacity or mobility can dramatically improve quality of life.
In the Winter quarter, students will learn about the relevant background from experts in the different disciplines, including Computer Science, Physiology, Geriatrics, Psychology, and BioDesign. They will also experience design thinking through smaller "trial voyage" projects that give them confidence in the design process. Projects will have the general theme of maintaining mobility, and students will be free to explore different opportunities in this context. Teams will work with coaches with a variety of expertise areas. The Winter quarter projects will focus on needfinding and the formulation of initial design concepts.
In the Spring quarter, selected projects will then be developed into a series of prototypes and tested in all dimensions –technical interventions, social and contextual design, organizational contexts, business, and distribution issues. We are aiming for designs that will have an impact in the world – through products, programs, and practices that affect people’s health on a broad scale. Through the help of the Center on Longevity and others, we hope to move them from the course into further development and real deployment.
In both quarters, a key part of the learning will be student group exercises and activities that facilitate understanding the issues of aging as well as the design process. Class sessions will integrate lectures and readings with experiential activities. We will work with residents and staff from a number of local facilities (both residential and non-residential) that provide for elders. Students will work directly with the people who could benefit from their ideas, to understand their needs and concerns, and to get their responses to the prototypes the students create.
The tentative syllabus is available on line here and a more detailed one with readings will be available by the beginning of the quarter.
Please contact Terry Winograd <winograd@cs.stanford.edu> with any questions about the course.