Episode 2: Students, industry, and user-friendly age-tech

Toini Palo: Welcome to the Co-Creating Learning Beyond Borders podcast. In this podcast series, we will focus on innovative, collaborative, and boundary-spanning approaches to education, especially those that encourage people from different backgrounds to create learning experiences together. In this episode, we are diving into the world of user-friendly age-tech design. What does it mean and require, and how to help students and entrepreneurs learn about it? My name is Toini Palo, and today with me are two wonderful professors from Singapore Institute of Technology, Agnes Xue and Peck Hoon Ong. Welcome. Let’s talk about our key concept a little bit more deep, user-friendly age-tech design. Agnes, how would you describe user-friendly age-tech design to a student who is considering what kind of opportunities this field provides for me? What does it entail?

Agnes Xue: So, when we speak about user-friendly age-tech, we are really talking about technology that respects the lived experiences of people. It’s not just about smart gadgets for older persons. It’s about weaving together technology gently, subtly, respectfully into the everyday relationships of what is meant by care. So be it in Singapore, be it in Finland, be it in any other countries, if we can really study the lived experiences of people and how, what is meant by being more digital at the same time, and what is meant by the pressures on the families, on the community services, on the healthcare system, to then put together and open up this space for new kinds of support for aging in place, then I would consider that as truly good design age tech, something that can help these seniors stay independent on one hand, but still stay connected. And easing the load on the caregivers, the load on the community services, if everything has been designed properly in the right way, respectfully.  For a student then, of course, this field has plenty of opportunities across interaction and product design, user experience research, service design, digital health, rehab technologies, smart homes, and mobility solutions. There are so many possibilities revolving around age-tech. And also there will be a growing demand for professionals who can think beyond the AI, who can continue to combine user-centered practice, universal design principles, futures thinking, along with the technical know-how or the clinical knowledge to be able to really develop something that reduces this digital divide for users, and very importantly, support a very dignified type of autonomous aging.

Toini: This is giving students very, very multiple contexts and very interesting contexts to learn so many different things. It is like a new world, like this kind of practice.

Agnes: Definitely a lot of cross-disciplinary collaborations can happen. 

Toini: Great. This is really great. What about, I would say that in Finland, one role, if we go to the next theme, I will say that in Finland, one role of universities of applied sciences is to support regional, neutral and trusted partner. And of course, we are also responsible to enhancing students’ competences – in innovation, research and development, as you said, Agnes, just that it is in Singapore as well. As well as in transdisciplinary collaboration and co-creation, it is the same in Finland as well. We have all these kinds of – competencies that are included somehow for our students’ competence package would say. Based on my experience, collaboration with students from other fields and countries together with users and businesses provides a very fruitful and rich learning environment for our students. 

Peck, how would you describe relationship between students and business in higher education and especially physiotherapy students in Singapore?

Peck Hoon Ong: I think we have many similarities between Metropolia and SIT in Singapore and Finland. We definitely value collaboration between students and industry partners. In Singapore, university of applied sciences, such as SIT, plays a strong emphasis on industry relevance and applied learning. Our students are exposed to businesses as well as industry partners quite early in their education. That said, usually these relationships often begin with a more structured kind of program like industry projects, internships, and applied learning experiences. They do have a lot of opportunities to interact with industry partners. And what is different from the project that we did and the experience that was allowed, afforded to our students who took part in this, that it has allowed us to explore more deeply the co-creative kind of relationship. Where students are not just solving a problem statement for the industry, but they were given the opportunity to really learn with the stakeholders and on the other hand, the users really understand what their needs are. I think this was a really powerful learning experience for our students. And this is, I feel it is especially important in age-tech, right? Because of businesses, we understand the markets and technologies, but students are the future. When we guide them well, they can probably bring a fresh perspective, grounded in their training in research, design thinking, and empathy as well. I think, yes, we have a very strong emphasis on applied learning, but this particular project has actually opened more experiences for our students. 

Toini: I agree with this. This is somehow how I have felt it as well and our students as well. So now we have collaborated actually for two years in this field and learned many things from each other. Two years. Education is something that is connecting us very deeply together, and we have had students from physiotherapy and occupational therapy and designing, and we have had students from ICT involved and from business management and nurse students. Yeah, quite a lot. Quite a lot of different students and students from different disciplines as well. If you should list some good practices concerning co-design, user-friendly age-tech, what would you like to include in your list in this field?

Agnes: At this point in time, it’s a bit of an advertisement for the publication that we put up together. The key ingredient that I think is contextual intelligence. So even though all these students come from different disciplines, they bring with them the technical knowledge, but that human intelligence of understanding cultures, the context of where they come from, what are the care values in place, I think it’s very rich. I think I’m very happy that our team, we published a book chapter and its titled Contexture Intelligence, Co-creating AI-Enabled Age Tech for Elderly Populations in Singapore and Finland. And this will be made available by Springer by the first quarter of next year, because we presented it also at the International Workshop on Cultural Robotics in March of 2025. So, the key message is really, no matter where we come from, we don’t forget the human story at the heart of developing any type of age-technologies. Our universities’ role is not really to develop the next robot, you know, the next smart device, but we want to nurture the next generation of empathetic innovators, people who can think, people who can think how to make use of the AI and not just forget how to think because they think AI exists. So we want, and we really truly hope that this next generation of innovators be it whether they are doing design or not, they can be clinicians, they can be allied health professionals, but they will definitely know how to have a humanistic kind of framework when they are co-developing different solutions with any other people who come from different disciplines.

Toini: Absolutely. I agree with all what you said about. Thank you, Agnes. What do you think, Peck?

Peck: I just wanted to echo what Agnes shared, and I think it’s very important for us to make sure we remember who we are designing and why we’re designing a lot of designs. I think one of the frustrations when I was working as a therapist on the grind, now I’m actually in the university, is that you get approached by so many different companies coming up with the latest technology, asking us to do a user trial, etc., and we look at it and go, All right. I don’t know who you consulted when you designed this. I’m not sure who’s going to use this because obviously they didn’t think of the user in mind. I really echo what Agnes said. And adding to it, I think the other thing is if we are looking at scaling a solution across borders, then cultural sensitivity is critical. And I think this really stood out when Minna, the student you mentioned earlier, the final year occupational therapy student from Metropolia, when she came over to Singapore and conducted the user trials in Singapore. Very quickly, she realized that solutions cannot just be copied and pasted; it must be adapted across different contexts. I think that’s a very important thing to take note of. And I’m really looking forward to the final project we’re doing together, which is our students looking at comparing Singapore and Finland around what influences the adoption of agetech in these two countries. I’m really looking forward to seeing what I discovered in this last project that I will be doing next year.

Toini: Yes, I look forward to the results of these thesis works. I think that one more issue that we really need in this design together, this transdisciplinary co-design is co-creation. And what we are doing now, we are preparing like a manuscript or handbook for students for the next round so that it will be useful for students abroad from Singapore and from Finland. It will be translated in Finnish and English so that this handbook will help our students to learn how to co-create, how to involve people and stakeholders from different sites, and how to conduct co-creation together from the beginning until the end to reporting. I’m very happy that we are going to have these publications, as you said, Agnes, and we have these thesis works. These are very nice results from our collaboration and somehow, I think that in future, they will help our students to prepare and learn more about it. Go like in deeper.

Peck: Can I just add one more point? Yes. Along with other publications as well, I think I just have this thought in mind that I think one of the key takeaways here is the importance of reflection in a learning journey. And it’s something we often underestimate, and I saw it very clearly when Minna came over, and she was stuck. And she sat there and she thought about why she was stuck, etc. And I’m very happy to see that the students we have had involved in our projects through these two years have brought upon a sense with them a sense of openness in this transdisciplinary international learning journey. And I think that is really, very good. And I feel that this ability is to be open and reflective, thinking about why something works, why something doesn’t work, why it works there but not here; it really helps them develop a deeper professional judgment. And that’s something students will take away with them well beyond this project. And it’s something that we need to adopt in almost every facet of our life. I think this is a very powerful learning journey.

Toini: Yes. I think that this is a very good point to stop or finalize this discussion. I would like to very, very warmly thank you, Agnes. Agnes Xue, our professor from Singapore Institute of Technology, and Peg Hoon Ong, also from Singapore Institute of Technology. Thank you very much.

Agnes and Peck: Thank you, everyone. Thank you.

Toini: The Co-creating Learning Beyond Borders podcast is produced by the Design Thinking and Co-creative Learning through Transdisciplinary Simulation-based Education Project as part of activity of Team Finland Knowledge Program 2023 in collaboration with Metropolia University of Applied Sciences and Singapore Institute of Technology.