The Connector: An Exploration of Later Life Community Connectedness Through Design Thinking and Co-Design, 2025

This publication by the Royal College of Art provides an overview of the approach and resulting guidance from the design research project ‘Enhancing Future Community Connectivity for Ageing Well in Place: Co-designing technology and Environments’. 

The project, part of Vivensa Foundation’s ‘Creating Suitable Living Environments and Communities for an Ageing Population’ initiative, aimed to explore how people of all ages, especially older adults, can live in homes that support their physical, social, and digital needs, helping them to stay connected and thrive.

Funded by Vivensa (formerly the Dunhill Medical Trust), it emphasised the importance of designing in ways that meet older people’s needs by involving them directly in the design research process. Working with residents from across three Guinness Partnership’s housing sites, the project used inclusive co-design methods to derive a collection of ‘Community Connectivity’ concepts towards improving residents’ lives. It is intended to inform future design interventions, conversations, and enhance design research practices by including ageing populations in the process.

This publication concludes with illustrated ‘Preferred Futures’ design concepts and accompanying descriptions. These concepts offer insight, guidance and suggested approaches to consider when creating future interventions around community connectivity in terms of object, service and space.