In the week of 23 April 2012 Madrid coloured orange for the annual Semana Naranja. In this week the Dutch Ambassy organized a number of activities to make 'The Netherlands' visible in Madrid, like a a bicycle tour through the city, a market with Dutch products and Dutch designers and architects that joined the public debate. I was asked as one of the guest speakers on behalf of Waag.
This debate came - coincidentally – right in the middle of the Design Week of the Universidad Europea de Madrid where I gave a workshop on design for elderly. UEM was the first design faculty in Spain that started with this discipline and the first group is now almost ready to graduate. Many students related their end project to questions surrounding the quality of life and getting older, a field in which Waag has a large experience and expertise.
For this reason I took the recent project Express to Connect as a central case for my workshop. Our way to involve young ánd old in concept development and the playful interaction that we pursue combined with our methods of design research proved to be a welcome and valuable addition to the research trajectory of the students and delivered some interesting ideas. Students made e.g. paper prototypes of games in which personal (multimedial) content of the players forms a trigger for storytelling.
