The Research Of Psychological Comfort Product System Design For The City Empty Nest Elderly

In China, the population of city empty nest elderly is soaring year after year. It becomesone of the most critical aging issues in our country. Although it is inevitable by the process ofsocial development, but city empty nest elder s living condition is quite unsatisfactory. Theynot only have to face to the annoyances brought by physical inconvenience, but also sufferedby multiple emotional alienations. In design field, while designing for elderly has become ahot topic, but it is obvious that designers put more attention on market rather than users. Theyfocus on the physical assistance more while neglect the importance of emotional experienceresearches.This paper aims to explore the real psychological demands of city empty nestelderly by means of user-oriented design methods, provides a systematical design solution forthe emotional healing of city empty nest elderly from the respect of positive aging view.Firstly, to collect and arrange relevant information to analyze the city empty nestelderly s psychological crisis in urban context, and inquire into the way to psychologicallycomfort the city empty nest elderly at present as well as the elements affecting the effect ofpsychological comfort.At the same time,to define psychological product from both narrowsense and broad sense, then to analyze its superiority to traditional psychological comfort andthe positive significance of improving emotional resonse,while put forward three userexperience levels of psychological comfort product. Afterwards, take Wuxi as a example tostudy the subject, show their behaviors of the city empty nest elderly in family interaction,interpersonal communication, emotional memory through six cases, from which to summarizethe contradiction of the mental deficiency of the city empty nest elderly and the demand ofpsychological comfort, meanwhile, find out the reasons. Secondly, the research propose fourbasic principles from the point of view of system design. Combining cases and the designpractice, it also raises ten specific design principles from two point of views which arestressing functional properties from material level and upgrading emotional experience fromnon-material level as to establish product system design model based on scenario approach.The value of psychological comfort product system is not only to help the city emptynest elderly to release negative emotions such as lonelyness and depression, but also tostimulate their positive emotions. It produces multi-dimensional emotional practice graduallythrough intacting with product system and help them face their potential in order to obtainsatisfaction and self-realization and achieving the ideal state of life.