responsabile: Medardo Chiapponi

visiting professor: Noemi Bitterman, professore associato

Technion Haifa – Israel Institute of Technology

presenza: 3 mesi -  primo semestre 2016-17

durata: 12 mesi

termine previsto: 31 dicembre 2016

finanziamento: 9.000 euro


tipologia: call di dipartimento

fonte di finanziamento: call 2015 Dppac
Linea di finanziamento 2 “Sostegno dell’attrattività internazionale”

descrizione del progetto di ricerca

The extended ageing of the world population is one of the most positive outcome of a widespread improvement of the quality of life. It can however become a social problem if we don’t take enough care of the health and wellbeing of older people in a precautionary way. On the contrary, if we do that we have to consider the rapidly increasing rate of people over 65 as one of the crucial factors in the design of the future of our cities, of their equipment and services and, more in general, of all the artefacts of the future material culture.

On the other hand, we know from the medical sciences and from daily experience that sport and, more in general, physical activity are the most powerful ways to become fit ageing people and to conserve health and wellbeing.

Two more context remarks which are at the same time points of the design brief. The first one is that ageing people have at their disposal more time and money to do sport in a correct way, at their own pace, to follow the needed education training and to buy the correct equipment. The second remark is that the combination of emerging technologies (sensors, hardware and software digital technology, ICT, Internet of things, material’s technology etc.) allows to tremendously improve the performances of existing sport equipment in terms of monitoring and control of the physical parameters to ensure a healthy way to do sport. It allows also to design totally new types of equipment and services, conceived not more as scientific equipment used by technical trained staff and services provided by technical trained staff but as easy products at common people’s disposal. In this context plays an important role also the information and communication design ranging over a vast variety of subjects, from the interface and handbooks of the products to education tools and communication campaigns.

The proposed project starts from these premises and consists of the design of products, services and communication/information design artefacts for the sport of ageing people as a tool to improve and preserve their health and wellness and to prevent physical and psychological problems. We will act in the optic of universal design considering that to think to ageing people allows to focus on specific relevant questions and like that to find meaningful and effective solutions for a much more wide range of people. These design projects are thought as the first examples of the activity of a permanent international design structure to build in Taipei together with the local partners and a preliminary planning of this structure is also part of the project.

descrizione del progetto didattico

Attività formativa: “Product Design Project - workshop 1” - Laboratorio di design del prodotto 1; insegnamento tenuto in inglese (10 cfu – attività caratterizzanti il corso di studio) – corso di laurea magistrale in Design del prodotto e della comunicazione.