This week we would like to present you one of the good practices of @geing Online, funded by Interreg Botnia-Atlantica programme and one of the five projects participating in ARCTIC PACER.
The ‘stakeholder-driven service development’ is an online application aiming to increase opportunities for meaningful social activities. It is developed in a process with multiple stakeholder inclusion. This co-creation process involves older adults as potential users of the application, organizations in the public social and health care sector as potential future providers of the service and also, regional SMEs in the IT sector who are responsible for technical coding of the application.
The project has been coordinated by Åbo Akademi University and Umeå University (in Sweden) and Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences (Finland) and the impact has been very notorious. Promoters have organised multiple protocol guided sessions with 57 older adults, with varying internet-use experience, that live in rural and remote areas. During these workshops, they have focused on usability and user experience and they have tested the application prototypes.
The sessions have taken place in varying contexts: home environments, university settings, public spaces such as social meeting spaces for older adults in the Ostrobothnian, Southern Ostrobothnian and Västerbotten regions. Furthermore, during the summer and fall of 2020, the involved organizations will continue developing the organizational and administrative aspects of the application together with a regional IT company.
According to our @geing Online partners, this co-creation process can form a good practice example for developing digital solutions together with groups encompassing many individuals less familiar with novel technologies applying an inclusive, user-centred approach. This application will be used as a tool by regional organizations catering to the needs and wishes of older clients to increase users’ access to meaningful social activities and to highlight the organizations’ and other regional actors’ activities targeting older adults.