Developing speculative concepts with experts and policy makers

A total of 15 experts (researchers, NGOs, policy makers) participated in the “Speculative design of healthy ageing” workshop, using novel creative research methods to create future scenarios for health ageing in Malaysia

The workshop was facilitated by the ImaginAging research team and included several activities, which introducted workshop participants to new ways of thinking about challenges around healthy ageing and working with speculative design tools.

Working in groups research experts, NGOs and policy makers with a background and interest in healthy aging in Malaysia identified the key challenges. Based on these they developed a number of speculative scenarios, asking ‘what if’ questions.

The speculative design concepts revolved around the healthy ageing theme and responded to some of the challenges in social care and inclusion, independent living, food and nutrition, transport and mobility. Several of these themens complemented the ones identified in the previous workshop with senior citizens.

Both workshops have strongly indicated that there is an untapped opportunity for exploring the use of speculative design methods for policy agenda setting and making in Malaysia.