Designing for Suburban Social Inclusion: A Case of Geo-Located Storytelling

This article showcases a digital solution for strengthening social inclusion and well-being of senior suburban residents of a socially diverse Finnish town. The study is framed as design research where research is conducted in order to feed into a design process. A background study was first conducted in order to identify the target group’s needs, abilities, and attitudes towards the neighbourhood. The results revealed positive attitudes towards the area and the need for relatedness, autonomy, competence, pleasure and stimulation, physical thriving and security. Following a User-Centered Design process we based our design choices on these results and developed a local geocaching solution incorporating storytelling. The aim was to encourage senior citizens to socialize, be physically active and to experience the local urban place. An interview-based evaluation with older adults (n=6) combined with an analysis of online cache log data, showed positive experiences of the solution.