Study And Application Of Design Planning For Care Product System For “The Empty Nest Elderly”

With the arrival of the ―silver-haired‖ wave, the empty nest phenomenon of the elderly population has become increasingly serious. Being lack of care for the elderly in empty nest households, these elderly have to face both some difficulties encountered in their daily life owing to the decline of their physical functions and face the mental loneliness. A study of care product system for ―the empty nest elderly‖ bases on the research methods for service design and investigation of kernel users, i.e., ―the empty nest elderly‖ to comprehend their true demands and fertilize the existing resources, which will provide a systematic and operational solutions to meeting the needs of the empty nesters, thus greatly improving the living actuality of the targeted group.Surveying, gleaning and sorting out the relevant information is to analyze the physiological and psychological crises of ―the empty nest elderly‖,to discuss the demands of ―the empty nest elderly‖, to subdivide the users’ groups and construct the user’s role model. Firstly, the detailed study of the current physiological characteristics of the elderly is carried on and the study results are arranged through the review of literatures and visit to experts, etc. Secondly, the depth interviews and record for ―the empty nest elderly‖ under discussion are made to explore the elderly’ verbal/non-verbal behavioral characteristics and the explicit/implicit demands. The further analysis of their objective behaviors describes the implicit demands into explicit ones to dig up the physiological, psychological and behavioral demands of ―the empty nest elderly‖ and to arrange the descriptions of demands. The detailed analysis of the surveyed data handles the classification of demands, to partition the user groups and to set up a user’s role model.Based on research for users, the value opportunities of the care product system are investigated, the specific product attributes of the care product system are clearly determined and system structure is built up. The concrete structural designing of the care product system is carried through in terms of three aspects, physical care, psychological care and daily care. This system uses mobile internet and internet of things as the technical support, integrates the existing products, services and the technical resources. In addition, the system is able to plan a solution to product system to adapt for ―the empty nest elderly‖ that possesses such advantages as the effective, convenient and sustainable development and offers an approach to tackling the conflict in the system fertilization. In the end, the interface design of the system is carried out, following the systematic analysis of the terminal and the terminal users’ study for care product system, inclusive of ―the empty nesters elderly‖, the siblings and the relatives, service supply base on the analysis of the use’ s characteristics of users.The main achievements of this thesis cover as follows: the care demands of contemporary ―the empty nester elderly‖ can be satisfied, making them lead a happy life in their remaining years while the elderly’ children can rest their hearts at work; the design of care product system adopts service design ideology, integrates the resources, optimizes the design options and maximizes the utilization of resources from an point of view of reasonable application and sustainable development; A basic thought and method of product system design based upon service design idea is presented, followed by an avenue to search for design opportunity point in designing plan of product system.