‘Build Your Story’: A Research Game That Includes Older Adults’ Perspectives

Abstract

Insight in older adults’ own ideals, ideas and experiences is crucial to enable meaningful applied research activities. To increase and enable older adults’ perspectives to be heard in academic research, innovative methods are needed. This research presents an analysis of a newly developed research game called ‘Build your story’. The aim of designing this game was to develop an innovative, participatory methodology that enables the collection of stories that older adults share about their daily life experiences, ideas and ideals. These are considered important input in setting and renewing a research agenda that attunes to older adults’ perspectives on what is important in their life. The game was tested in individual and group sessions with older adults with and without dementia. Despite critique on the design and use, observations and experiences also demonstrate a different method allows different stories to be told. Positive questions and associations offer opportunities for dialogue.