Louis Neven

Rejuvenating Design Bikes, Batteries, and Older Adopters in the Diffusion of E-bikes

Old age is not normally associated with innovativeness and technical prowess. To the contrary, when treating age as a distinct category, policy makers, innovation scholars, and companies typically regard younger people as drivers of innovation, and the early adoption of new technology. In this paper, we critically investigate this link between age, ineptness, and technology adoption using a case study of the diffusion of electric bikes in the Netherlands. We demonstrate how, during the first wave of e-bike acceptance, old age was constructed as an arena in which important learning processes took place, and where older persons became early adopters of e-bikes. Theoretically, this paper speaks critically to the prolific literature on innovation diffusion and its treatment of adopter categories as generic concepts. Using age as a central dimension, our research highlights the situated and constructed nature of adopter categories, and thus challenges age-based assumptions about innovation and technology use by younger and older persons. These insights about what we term the rejuvenation of e-bikes help us rectify existing biases of older persons as an inherently problematic group of technology users.

How diversity gets lost: Age and gender in design practices of information and communication technologies

ABSTRACT This article adopts an intersectional approach to investigate how age, gender, and diversity are represented, silenced, or prioritized in design. Based on a comparative study of design practices of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for young girls and older people, this article describes differences and similarities in the ways in which designers tried to cope with diversity. Ultimately diversity was neglected, and the developers relied on hegemonic views of gender and age, constructed older people and young girls as an “other,” and consequently their input was neglected. These views were thus materialized in design and reinforce such views in powerful yet unobtrusive ways.

Zorgtechnologie voor ouderen

SamenvattingHet Ambient Assistant Living programma van de Europese Commissie heeft een totaal budget van € 700 miljoen over 7 jaar. Het ministerie van VWS draagt hier jaarlijks € 1,9 miljoen aan bij. Het is één van de voorbeelden die laat zien hoe ‘hot’ de vergrijzing is en hoe ICT als ‘oplossing’ naar voren geschoven wordt.