Aging & Social Change: Thirteenth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

Local aging policies have a significant variation in strategies, actions, and projects implemented. Serious games have been investigated as one of the most efficient strategies for aging care, as they are immersive, motivating, multidimensional, and fun strategies. Maybe the territories just need to be trained for designing gamed-based strategies and projects from a national perspective. This study implements a co-creation framework to design guidelines for game-based strategies implementation and consultancy for aging territories. Three researchers (health and tourism fields), seven bachelor students (marketing, health, tourism, management areas), and one specialized national company (Agilidades, Inc.) had a weekly meeting in a 3-week program (45 min. each). Participants used a design thinking strategy (collaborative mind map) to explore and start defining guidelines for game-based strategies implementation and consultancy for aging territories. Results: Three different versions of a collaborative mind map were built. We have started by thinking about gaming positioning as a strategy for aging care (cost/effectiveness of gaming strategies for aging care; literacy in lifestyles and gaming (physical, mental, and psychosocial health). Then, we discussed the role of gaming in the future of aging (personalized center care; humanistic approaches). Finally, the team created linked areas between the topics already written and we found these new areas/topics: specialized online training; problem-based gaming design; gaming compassion design; game-based research. Conclusion: A broad framework emerged from this exercise. This action-research study is a good starting point to think about guidelines for the implementation and consultancy of game-based strategies in aging policies.