AGE OF_

CHALLENGE

Designing for aging is often misunderstood as a narrow accessibility problem, when it’s really about supporting people through changing life stages – mobility shifts, hearing loss, confidence changes, and more – while enabling them to live fully and independently. Our challenge was to help a mixed SF Design Week audience see this space differently and leave with something usable: not just inspiration, but a clear framework for future thinking and a hands-on way to brainstorm real, differentiated solutions for older adults.

RESULTS

We designed a participatory workshop that paired expert framing with a design fiction method, then translated both into a structured team exercise. Participants used prompt cards to build “How might we…” challenges and create a low-fi billboard/full-page ad concept, followed by share-outs and coaching feedback.

The session became one of the first sold-out events at San Francisco Design Week, with more than 50 participants in the room and a real cross-section of people—from emerging talent to product designers to mid–director level leaders—showing up because they were curious about what it actually means to design for aging. The energy stayed high through the whole experience: teams worked for 40 minutes to build their “How might we…” scenarios using the prompt cards, then translated those ideas into low-fi billboard/full-page ads and shared them out.

The solutions were genuinely varied, each group was solving for a different challenge an older adult might be living with, and the share-outs became a moment of live learning as Julian and Emily gave feedback and helped teams think through the branding and execution choices behind their concepts. When we closed with a quick synthesis and encouragement to apply this thinking to their own work, nobody rushed out; people hung around, kept talking, and asked us, “What’s next?” which is the best signal you can get coming out of an experience like this.

The post-event survey confirmed what we felt in the room: a 4.77/5 star rating, a 9/10 recommendation score, and 95% rating the collaboration as Very Good or Excellent—plus the momentum carried forward with +100 people added to the mailing list and a waitlist forming for whatever comes next.