From Bottom-up Insights to Feature Ideas: a Case Study into the Office Environments of Older Computer Workers

Given recent demographic changes, adapting the office environments of older workers to their needs has become increasingly important in supporting an extension of working life. In this paper, we present a case study research of older computer workers in Romania, with the goal of gaining bottom-up in-sights that support the ideation, design, and development of features for a smart work environment. Utilizing a multi-method approach, we combine contextual interviews and observations, an analysis of needs and frictions for deriving in-sights, an ideation workshop for eliciting potential features, and an online sur-vey among experts to evaluate the final feature ideas. Following this compre-hensive yet efficient approach, we were able to gain a rich understanding of the work realities and contexts of older computer workers and to transform that un-derstanding into a concrete set of prioritized feature ideas.