Service Design (MA)
Fanghui Song
Hello! I’m Fanghui. As a service designer with transportation design background, I have a great passion for human-centered design and experience innovation. I have undertaken various projects focusing on end-to-end user experience and service transformation in different sectors. I’m keen on discovering the transformative potential of design and translating user problems into business opportunities to create values for both customer and client. My area of interest lies in: digital transformation, strategic design, e-commerce, transportation innovation, etc.
Awards:
First Prize & Grand Challenge Prize | 10/06/2019
Imperial College Business School Entrepreneurial Journey Contest
Finalist Award | 21/10/2017
SAIC Design International Challenge Competition
First Prize | 27/07/2017
PACE 2017 Collaboration & Innovation Challenge Competition
Sponsors
Camden Council
“Ageing comes with transitions. Life goes on as usual, and then comes a point in time that we experience a change: be it in physical
fitness, social situation, or mental capacity. Transitions occur during each phase of the life course of an individual, but are definitely prominent in older age.”
When seniors become socially isolated, they are more vulnerable when faced with challenges, especially during life transitions in their
later lives. As they age and go through cognitive decline, most seniors start losing their sense of purpose as well. Furthermore, seniors, who are being cut off from society, have limited access to basic services, such as transport and GP. The absence of regular human engagement can gradually lead them to loneliness- a major trigger for mental health issues.
Surveys of ageing in England show that at least 10 percent of older people are isolated and a similar number report being lonely.
Moreover, a Transform Ageing Report states that in the UK, by 2020, 47% of the population will be above 50 and 32% of the workforce
will be over 50 according to the Office for National Statistics. This leads us to think about the speed at which the UK is moving towards an ageing population and the increasing chances of social isolation occurring.
With the outspread of the COVID-19, most of the seniors are trapped at their own homes, with few family members living around. There is a higher chance that they will become isolated from their surroundings and lack essential social connections.
To help the seniors better tackle social isolation, I collaborated with Radhika Agrawal for my final project in RCA under the support of the Camden Council. We designed an age inclusive co-sharing platform, which aims to empower seniors to have a higher engagement within their communities, by utilizing residents' accumulated knowledge and interest to boost intergenerational engagement.
You can view the project on my personal page. For more details on the design journey, please refer to http://www.rcaservicedesign.com/projects/nurtur.
To prevent seniors from feeling socially isolated and ensure a more sustainable ageing experience for them, we decided to start our intervention at an earlier stage, aiming to enhance their current social support network, "prescribing people to people".
We had meetings with Camden Council, Camden Older People's Day Service, NextDoor, etc, and conducted ethnographic research with potential users, through co-creation workshops and photo journals to understand their social support network better.
With seniors being perceived as vulnerable in society, their value is often neglected. But, while talking to them, we were stunned by the abundance of experience they have, over all their years of work and living life.
So, we found that there is a missed opportunity to reutilize senior’s accumulated knowledge and experiences to empower their social support network and enhance their sense of agency by boosting community engagement across generations.
Medium:
Video, Paper, AppSize:
6 monthsIn Collaboration with:
Street Poster
Seniors receiving Nurtur Pack at the comfort of their own homes
Nurtur Leaflet
Community Map
Nurtur App Interface
In order to make Nurtur accessible and inclusive to all age groups, we have created a video for Nurtur App to help seniors and other residents onboard the digital platform and learn how to navigate on the app.
Competitor Analysis
It is also essential to encourage people in their later lives to have engagements with people across ages, so as to maintain their cognitive abilities and confidence, and to keep the seniors in the track.
So Nurtur is trying to boost more intergenerational engagements for seniors and bring control back to them to enhance their sense of agency and let seniors define their own community living experience.
The Ecosystem of Nurtur
Our source of funding comes from Tesco and Co-op. As active members of the community, they have community grants such as Bags of Help that we can apply for. Large chains like Starbucks, who have allocated budgets for CSR, would also benefit from collaborating with Nurtur.
Outside the community, Camden Council will monitor and support the whole system and share the experience with the other TRAs.
With the outspread of COVID-19, we noticed the increase in informal care and support that residents are providing each other in communities. We believe that Nurtur will connect people and places for more collective growth in the long run, and build more resilient and independent communities in the "new normal" era.
