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Innov Aging
Innov Aging
innovateage
Innovation in Aging
2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.2989
igaa057.2989
Abstracts
Session 7550 (Symposium)
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
User Involvement in Research on Aging and Health: Creating Knowledge and Technologies With Older Adults
Fristedt Sofi Chair Wanka Anna Co-Chair Charness Neil Discussant 2020 
16 12 2020 
16 12 2020 
4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”820 820
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract
Although, user involvement is largely recognized as instrumental when developing relevant knowledge, services as well as products - aging populations are still likely to be sparsely involved in such processes. Surprisingly, many gerontechnologies are still developed based on a technological perspective rather than a gerontological perspective. Consequently, age-related changes as well as needs, actual use or perceptions of older adults are disregarded or neglected. Similar problems apply to public and private environments with potentially negative implications on accessibility. The present symposium includes four presentations that address user involvement, by capturing older adults’ and aging populations’ use as well as perceptions of emerging technologies, successful development of gerontechnologies, and a multigenerational mass-experiment on housing accessibility in later life. The first study from Germany captures the everyday situation of smartphone use as well as aspects of user experience, affect and social context among older adults. The second study addresses perceptions and attitudes of three generations in Sweden related to continuous technological advancement of products intended to support active and healthy aging. The third presentation will describe the iterative development process of the 2020 mass-experiment – the Housing Experiment -- involving older adults, stakeholders in the housing sector, teachers and pupils in Sweden. The fourth presentation from Canada explores the benefits, challenges, and solutions to support older adult engagement in research that leads to the successful development of technologies for and with older adults. Finally, our discussant will further elaborate on the respective study findings and summarize the symposium.