Design for Agile Aging
Assignment 04: Background Understanding

Overview
This assignment has three parts. All three parts must be completed before the next class, Tuesday the 29th.

Part 1: Disability Exercise
In class, each of you will be assigned a particular disability. You are to select 8 hours between now and the next class to spend being "disabled." You will receive a separate handout describing your specific disability and the activities you should attempt to perform during your 8 disabled hours. You should document your experience by taking notes. Be prepared to discuss the experience in class.

The disability-specific handouts are available here:

• Hand
• Knee
• Hip
• Arm
• Eyes

Part 2: Photo Activity
Please bring in the following types of photos to show and discuss in this class session:

• Up to 3 photos of what you perceive as potential “barriers to physical activity” for an older adult.  (The potential barriers captured in your photos could represent a range of ‘domains’, including the psychological, perceptual [e.g., having to do with vision, hearing, etc.], social, physical environment, etc.).  Go for creativity in attempting to capture potential barriers that represent different domains, if possible.
• Think about the potential barriers that you captured in your photos. Are they specific to older adults, or are there other subpopulations that also might find/perceive them as barriers as well?

Part 3: Understanding
We’re now starting the design cycle again for the projects you will be working on the rest of this quarter. You are in teams that were clustered around a common interest, and are now going to start from there to come up with more possibilities and then choose one to develop as a prototype.

The first step in that process, as in our bubble diagram, is “Understand.”  By that we mean taking advantage of experts, on-line materials, scholarly articles, and whatever other means you can find, in order to understand the background for the problem and to see what has already been done and where you should go to find out more.

For next Tuesday we want you to begin this process, working alone or with members of your team (whatever works out best for you).  Starting with the seed of your idea, do web searches, send email with questions to any of the teaching staff or other people you know or encounter with relevant knowledge. The next step after this will involve going back out to the users. This step is about developing expertise.

We recognize that many important topics aren’t being covered until later in the course. Browse the syllabus and check the readings, and send any questions to the relevant course staff and participants.

In class on Tuesday you’ll have a short opportunity to discuss what you’ve found with your team, and then will continue the process outside of class.