Envisioning the Future: Activity-centred CONOPS in the Co-Design of a Sociotechnical System for Healthy Ageing

As life expectancy in Europe increases, the number of older people also grows. With advancing age, people may experience chronic physical and cognitive difficulties and require services and support for longer. The SHAPES (Smart and Healthy Ageing through People Engaging in Supportive Systems) Innovation Action addresses the challenge of the ageing population by developing a sociotechnical ecosystem comprising a variety of technological and human solutions to enable and facilitate active, independent, and healthy ageing at home. An important step towards this however is envisioning not only the services and support that can be technologically facilitated but, more importantly, what kind of lifestyles we should be seeking to promote. In this paper, we outline the development of an activity-centred concept of operations (CONOPS) for designing a sociotechnical system to facilitate active, independent and healthy ageing lifestyles. With particular focus on human factors, the activity-centred CONOPS allows us to describe the current and future contexts and their associated challenges from the perspectives of multiple stakeholders who interact in them. Our approach allows for the representation of the diversity within the ecosystem, whilst also enabling participants to recognise themselves within it, shaping its development and informing its design, development and operational implementation.