Unison.ai

Partner

Ealing Council

Role

Service Designer

Background

Local councils in the UK are navigating a challenging policy landscape characterized by:

In this context, it is more crucial than ever for councils to engage with and understand citizens through participatory processes if they wish to create effective and efficient policies.

The lonliness and lack of purpose is a common that happen to the elderly age 65-70 who has just retired from there long-term position. which emphasize the importance of a need these people to find sense of purpose and strangthen community connections as their first supportive touchpoint.

Identity Transition
After retirement, individuals might lose their occupational identity, requiring a redefinition of their values and goals. This can lead to psychological stress and emotional adjustments.
Social Adjustments
Work often constitutes a significant part of people’s social lives, and retirement may result in changes to social circles. This results in their dependency on chatting with the librarian. Establishing new social connections and finding new meaning and purpose become crucial in their local community.

About the service

'Unison' is an AI-assisted conversation platform that helps local council public servants overcome resource constraints and skill limitations while capturing opinions from a wider range of citizens more efficiently and inclusively

Why current system

Key Insights

Agenda Setting(Early Stage) offers greater potential for citizen influence in the whole policy cycle.
Incapable to expend the agenda setting funnel
Agenda Setting as a “Funnel” : The agenda-setting phase can be visualized as a funnel-like process with multiple layers of filters where issues and opinions compete to be recognized and prioritized by public institutions. Factors influencing this process include public attention, feasibility, election timing, and political support. A significant insight from our research is that due to resource constraints, local councils are often unable to broaden this funnel. This limitation restricts the diversity of opinions that can be considered, which can result in the marginalization of certain voices in the current system.

How might we

Intervention Strategy

Our Design Strategy is to initiate a participant-led network that empowers the elderly who are over the age of 65 to engage with interest-based communities in the way they want, helping them make continuous connections and enrich their future life. Skill sharing has a high potential of giving a sense of purpose giving value to the elderly's uniqueness and can lead to social connection and improved overall mental health.

Listen: To cultivate the elderly self-value through community building and positive learner feedback
Connect: To connect elderly with skills to share and learners, fostering skill-sharing sessions at reasonable fees
Facilitate: To support effortless, customiseable skill-sharing sessions for elderly sharers with toolkits, and initial support from librarians

My Role and Reflection

"The 'Library of Living Minds' is a social prescribing service available in local libraries, designed to empower individuals aged 65 and older to transition smoothly from working life to retirement. This initiative fosters the sharing of knowledge and the formation of interest-oriented communities, ensuring continuous engagement and promoting healthier aging."