Co-design with older adults and service providers yields more impactful community programs.

Why It Matters

This approach leverages lived expertise and existing community connections to ensure programs are not only user-appropriate but also more likely to be adopted and sustained. It moves beyond traditional user feedback to true collaborative creation.

Key Finding

Engaging older adults and service providers as active co-design partners leads to better program development by incorporating their real-world knowledge and community ties.

Key Findings

• Older adult research partners were instrumental in the design, implementation, and evaluation phases.
• Lived expertise and community connections of older adults and service providers are valuable assets in research and program development.
• A participatory approach to engagement evaluation can assess diversity, satisfaction, and impact.

Research Evidence

Aim: How can older adults and service providers be effectively engaged as research partners in the co-design of community mobility programs to maximize their impact?

Method: Mixed-methods developmental evaluation

Procedure: The study involved older adults and service providers as research partners in designing, implementing, and evaluating a community mobility-promoting program. A mixed-methods approach, including qualitative data collection and analysis (e.g., focus groups, thematic analysis), was used to understand the process and outcomes of this co-design engagement.

Context: Community health and mobility programs

Design Principle

Authentic user and stakeholder co-creation is essential for designing impactful community-based solutions.

How to Apply

When designing any community-facing program, establish a diverse advisory panel of target users and service providers who are compensated and empowered to contribute throughout the entire design lifecycle.

Limitations

The specific context of mobility programs may not directly translate to all community initiatives. The developmental evaluation approach focuses on iterative improvement, which might not capture long-term sustainability as directly.

Student Guide (IB Design Technology)

Simple Explanation: When you design something for a specific group of people, it's much better if you ask those people to help you design it. They know what they need and what works best for them.

Why This Matters: This shows that involving the people who will actually use your design, and those who support them, makes your final product much more likely to be successful and useful.

Critical Thinking: To what extent can the findings from a community mobility program be generalized to other design contexts, and what are the potential challenges in implementing true co-design in resource-constrained environments?

IA-Ready Paragraph: The value of co-design, particularly with end-users and relevant stakeholders, is highlighted by research such as MacNeil et al. (2023), which found that involving older adults and service providers as research partners significantly enhanced the impact of community mobility programs by leveraging their lived expertise and community connections.

Project Tips

• Identify your target users and any relevant service providers early on.
• Plan how you will involve them in your design process, not just for feedback, but for active contribution.

How to Use in IA

• Reference this study when justifying the inclusion of user testing or co-design workshops in your design process, particularly for community-focused projects.

Examiner Tips

• Demonstrate a clear strategy for involving end-users and stakeholders in the design process, not just as passive recipients of information.

Independent Variable: Engagement of older adults and service providers as research partners.

Dependent Variable: Impact of the community mobility-promoting program (e.g., relevance, effectiveness, satisfaction).

Controlled Variables: Program content, community setting, evaluation methods.

Strengths

• Employs a mixed-methods approach for comprehensive understanding.
• Focuses on developmental evaluation for iterative improvement.

Critical Questions

• How can the power dynamics between researchers and community partners be effectively managed in a co-design process?
• What are the ethical considerations when involving vulnerable populations in co-design research?

Extended Essay Application

• An Extended research project could investigate the optimal methods for recruiting and retaining diverse community members for co-design activities, or compare the effectiveness of different co-design methodologies for specific user groups.

Source

Evaluating the impact of engaging older adults and service providers as research partners in the co-design of a community mobility-promoting program: a mixed methods developmental evaluation study · Research Involvement and Engagement · 2023 · 10.1186/s40900-023-00523-5