Kwanprapa Unarat

Kwanprapa is a designer from Thailand, experiences in communication design. She curious about human behaviours with surrounding influences and intend to apply design disciplinary for develop user experience.

Wandering Walk: When city wandering supports lifelong learning in the ageing population

Inspired by childhood memory with her grandparents, the project focused on the topic of ageing society and questioned about how to maintain the ability to live independently in older age. People live longer but longer doesn’t mean healthier or happier. Many older people have health and cognitive ability recession after retirement. So, the first research question is not about ‘how to live longer’ but ‘How to live independently as long as possible’ and found that lifelong learning approach might be the key to maintain their ability.

However, there is not every older people is an active learner due to various cause such as stigma, and their early experience in learning. One of the challenges of learning in older age is how to build up a growth mindset and nudge them to physically and metaphorically step out of the comfort zone. To support the older population to have lifelong learning lifestyle, the project use walking activity that the target user familiar with to take them to explore the city and introduce them to learning activity by local organisations in the city. Walking activity is flexible, no-hierarchy and provide opportunity for learning at their own pace as well as create a chance for socialising during the walk.

Wandering walk is the activity that aims to a learning mindset and encourages older people to enjoy learning again through city wandering activity. The framework designs to nudge curiosity of ageing users and encourages them to be an active learner by sharing, learning and cooperating in informal-open-environment.

See full project and the research process here