Quality of Life of Elderly People in Iran : With Sevice Design Approach

Abstract: In the aging world of today, more attentions are grabbed towards studies on elderly. New facilities and technologies are emerged to serve to the elderly, maketheir life easier, better and more useful. Having participated in a study on thequality of life of the elderly in Europe, it was aimed to run a similar project toresearch the quality of life of the elderly in a Non-EU country. This was donethrough the research questions “What is the quality of life for them?” and “Howa designer, focused on service design, can improve their quality of life?”The knowledge for the study was obtained from fields Quality of Life of ElderlyPeople, Service Design, Service Design Process, and Qualitative Research. As thekey country for this study, Iran was chosen. Study on the target group in thiscountry was done through Cultural Probes and in analyzing the probes, Processfor Empathy in Design was used. To visualize the results of the target group study,Affinity Diagrams and Personas were drawn.The result was designing a service for the target group, which is presented byConcept Scenario, Storyboards, System Maps and Blueprints. In this concept,called “Virtual Family”, the personas are encouraged to be members of a networkwhich is supported by an organization/community in terms of health, social life,leisure activities and educational programs. This network is forming a virtualfamily regarding the traditional values and ethics which are important for thisage group. Additionally it supports them with entertainment and educationalprograms. Later on, the service concept was evaluated by a number of people inthe same age and social group of the target group. Evaluators found the conceptan excellent complement for mentioned target group who are on the verge oflosing their family and social structure, but the organizational system of the contextcountry should be studied to know if it is planning is practical in that context.