The digital ecosystem of applications, services, and consumer tech often overlooks older adults, or at best, reduces them to clichés about limited cognitive or physical abilities. Such age biases that are embedded in the design processes can lead to the digital marginalization of older adults — not only their exclusion from the app, service, or tech offered in a digital format, but often also from their analog equivalent which is either phased out, or non-existent in the case of digitally-native products. This is partly rooted in a techno-solutionist approach to designing products aimed at both the general consumer market and specifically at older adults, where the products are designed as an intervention aimed at solving age-related problems or ailments, failing to empower or meaningfully engage older adults.

The past few years witnessed advances such as Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and the emergence of virtual reality (VR). These support an unprecedented level of naturalness and immersiveness for our interactions, in ways that were the domain of sci-fi until just a few years ago. Yet, these have also led to the amplification of techno-solutionism, with many such interfaces being heavily marketed as helpful or essential for older adults — often without any evidence or lacking any consultation of this demographic.

Grounded in close to three decades of research in this space, I deconstruct in this talk some of the current design trajectories that are emerging in the space of GenAI, voice-enabled, and immersive interactions. I then reflect on how we may approach the design of such interfaces in ways that are more ethical, inclusive, and meaningful to a broader range of users and contexts. I do this in the context of several of our recent projects and studies which aimed to challenge the techno-solutionism approach to designing age-tech. 

BIO:
Cosmin Munteanu is an Associate Professor and Schlegel Research Chair in Technology for Healthy Aging with the Department of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo (Canada). He has dedicated almost three decades to research on facilitating natural, meaningful, and safe interactions between people and digital media and devices. Cosmin’s interests include designing intelligent applications that improve access to information, support learning late in life, and reduce digital marginalization, such as for older adults whose enjoyment of life and participation in society could be better supported by advances in interactive assistive technologies such as voice, conversational, or virtual reality interfaces. For this, he draws from a wide range of disciplines such as computing sciences, engineering, critical theory, and technology and society studies.