What happens when aging in place isn’t just about staying home, but about staying connected?

Connected Aging is a research-based design project that explores how systems-oriented design can support elderly individuals in maintaining independence while preventing social isolation. Through a series of speculative, human-centred artefacts, the project imagines gentle, everyday interventions—digital and social—that help older adults stay active in their communities, feel safe in their homes, and remain visible to others.

At the heart of the project is a question: How can we design systems that value human contact as much as care? Aging in place is becoming the norm in many countries, including Norway, but while home may offer physical security, it doesn’t guarantee emotional connection. This project was driven by the desire to highlight the often-overlooked rituals, routines, and micro-interactions that give older adults a sense of purpose and belonging.

The work is grounded in field research, interviews with elderly participants, and visits to community settings like Senior Café gatherings. These conversations revealed both the challenges and quiet strengths of aging life, especially the value of casual conversation, neighbourly trust, and the desire to still give something back. In response, the project presents three design artefacts:

• Persona Cards: Illustrated characters based on real-life insight, used in co-design sessions to imagine care-based exchanges.
• Storyboard Game: A visual narrative tool that allows participants to piece together a full circle of support, where one act of kindness leads to another.
• Senior Time Banking App Mock-up: A speculative interface for a digital time-banking system where older adults can give and receive help, check in on each other, and build daily rituals of contact.

Each artefact was tested in workshops to invite reflection, imagination, and storytelling. The project blends speculative design with systems thinking, not to predict the future, but to provoke new ways of seeing what we already have—and what we still need. Ultimately, Connected Aging invites us to rethink not just how we age, but how we stay part of each other’s lives.