Designing Robots for Aging: Wisdom as a Critical Lens

Abstract

Although the concept of wisdom is ancient, empirical research on it has only recently received attention in gerontology. This coincides with a critical turn away from a deficit model of aging, viewing aging as a series of losses, toward a more supportive and developmental model. This article draws on this recent work to consider how wisdom can be a critical lens for human-robot interaction (HRI) researchers and other technology design researchers to pay more attention to the coping strategies that older adults accumulated throughout their lives. We engaged in a 6-month collaborative design process with community-dwelling older adults. The contributions of this article are twofold. First, we found that wisdom as a design concept helps researchers to critically examine how they define knowledge. Wisdom as an accumulation of experiential knowledge of older adults helps researchers rethink the definition of knowledge—valuing computational and technological knowledge—in the field of HRI. Second, wisdom leads researchers to the past experiences of older adults. Although past experiences are as important as current experiences, they are not actively considered in robot design studies for older adults. We hope wisdom as a critical lens could allow researchers to integrate the invisible aspects of older adults’ aging experiences into the existing practices of designing robots for aging users.