Design Challenges for Reconnecting in Later Life: A Qualitative Study

TL;DR

This study explores the challenges older adults face in reconnecting with friends using technology, based on interviews, and offers design considerations for tools to facilitate social reconnection in later life.

Contribution

It provides qualitative insights into reconnecting challenges among older adults and proposes design considerations for technology to support social reconnection.

Findings

Older adults have a desire to reconnect with friends.

Challenges include technological barriers and emotional factors.

Design opportunities for supportive reconnecting tools.

Abstract

Friendships and social interactions are renown contributors to wellbeing. As such, keeping a healthy amount of relationships becomes very important as people age and the size of their social network tends to decrease. In this paper, we take a step back and explore reconnection -- find out about or re-contact old friends, an emerging topic due to the increased use of computer-mediated technology by older adults to maintain friendships and form new ones. We report on our findings from semi-structured interviews with 28 individuals from Costa Rica and Poland. The interviews aimed to explore whether there is a wish to reconnect, and the challenges encountered by older adults to reconnect. We contribute with design considerations for tools allow- ing older adults to reconnect, discussing opportunities for technology.