An Interdisciplinary Hackathon with Older Adults on Community-Based Active Ageing: Outcomes and Lessons Learned

Abstract

To facilitate the adoption of community-based practices for active ageing, it is important to design these practices together with a wide range of older adults from the community via an interdisciplinary perspective. Hackathons, originally developed by programmers, have been adapted by different disciplines and started to include a wide range of users and stakeholders. Not only have hackathons been found to generate tangible outcomes such as design concepts but also intangible ones such as positive experiences. We aim to investigate how to conduct an intergenerational and interdisciplinary hackathon to support designing community-based active ageing and explore the types of tangible and intangible outcomes it could bring. An intergenerational and interdisciplinary hackathon was organised by four disciplines with a senior centre in the Netherlands. Observations, interviews, and surveys were conducted to understand the experiences of participants, the outcomes of the hackathon, and areas of improvement for future hackathons. The positive experiences of participants were categorised into five themes; two types and four types of tangible and intangible outcomes were identified respectively, and six areas for improvement were specified. The findings were discussed in relation to recent literature and guidelines for organising this type of hackathon were formulated.

Keywords: behavior change, interdisciplinary collaboration, intergenerational collaboration, participatory design, co-design, ecological model