For decades, older adults have lagged behind in their uptake of digital technologies, and they continue to do, despite many having acquired digital skills during their working lives.
Meanwhile, studies have regularly shown that older adults are capable of learning to use digital technologies when sufficiently motivated to do so. This points to the exclusionary and unappealing nature of the digital economy for older adults, who, if considered at all by those designing digital technologies, are not attended to seriously as a heterogeneous stakeholder group with various needs and wants.
DigiAge aims to fill a critical need to create a digital society that delivers equal to benefits older adults by:
- Analysing data on older adults that has been collected over the last 20 years to understand various interrelated and multiplicative factors in older adults’ exclusion from the digital economy;
- Conducting interviews and focus groups with older adults to explore how this period of rapid digitalisation has altered older adults’ relationship with digital technologies, focusing on four key areas undergoing important change as a result of the pandemic: Health, Communication, Place, Finance;
- Co-designing new technology prototypes with older adults to establish a radical new practice which enables older adults to meaningfully participate in creating an equitable digital society; and
- Creating lasting resources to instil best practice for a digital economy that is inclusive of the full diversity of older adults.