Designing e-Services For An Ageing Society

On 5 December 2013, Dr Calvin Chan, Head of Business programme in School of Business, conducted a presentation to share about his research project, which aims to explore the situated usage of e-services among senior citizens in designing useful e-services for an ageing society.

This project is a cross-unit effort as it involves Assoc Prof Kalyani Mehta, Head of Gerontology programme in School of Human Development and Social Services; Assoc Prof Chui Yoon Ping, Head of Human Factors in Safety programme in School of Science and Technology; and Dr Kevin Tan, Lecturer in UniSIM College, in collaboration with external partners, viz., Thye Hua Kwan Moral Charities, RSVP Singapore - The Organisation of Senior Volunteers, Council for Third Age and Presbyterian Community Services.

During his talk, Calvin highlighted two key global trends that are expected to continue - the rapid ageing of many societies and the proliferation of e-services; such as e-banking and e-shopping that are fast changing how people go about their daily lives. With this, he explained that it is important to design e-services that encourage senior citizens' adoption and usage in order to build an inclusive and age-friendly society. Preliminary results of the study suggest that bodily capital, cultural capital, economic capital and social capital are the four key areas influencing senior citizens' use of e-services.

This project has attracted the attention of the Silver Industry Standards Committee under the Singapore Standards Council. The committee is planning to develop a standard on designing e-services for senior citizens based on the output of this research.