Focusing on supporting healthier and more resilient networks of care, this project investigates how we can enhance the practices, knowledge, and tools available in later life. With three core threads, I am exploring the role of community-led, service-enabled, and technology-driven care networks.


Project - Improving Technology-supported Care Networks

Project - Designing for Ecologies of Care in Later Life

Project - Developing Support Pathways with Caregivers

Designing social engagement technologies with older Australians, my doctorate demonstrated how modes of interpretative flexibility can support interaction designers in co-creating with ageing communities.

Recognising the lack of understanding around the experiences of people with long-term, I supported a 3-month study mapping patients' experiences. This analysis highlighted the role of agency and social support in their lives. 

Towards better equipping older Australians to engage with the digital economy, Shaping Connections ︎ explored the perceived ICT risks that affect older Australians and co-designed strategies with them – connecting practices with perceptions. 

☞ Article (2024): Factors influencing seniors’ anxiety in using ICT ︎
☞ Article (2024): Playing with Persona ︎
☞ Article (2023): Strength-based co-design that EMPOWERs ︎
☞ Report (2022):  Co-designing Participatory Strategies With Older Adults ︎
☞ Article (2022): Co-Creating ICT Risk Strategies with Older Australians ︎
☞ Report (2021): Reducing Perceived Risk & Promoting Digital Inclusion ︎
☞ Grant (2020): ACCAN Project Grants ︎

Forthcoming Paper
Navigating Mediated Kinship & Care Ageing-in-Place ︎

Sheahan, J.

Journal of Anthropology and Aging

Nearly three decades after Marilyn Strathern suggested the implications of innovation at birth, today, we are also grappling with technology's impact on later life. As assemblages of technologies have become essential to how and to whom we care, today, we also struggle with a future seemingly trapped by present choice as techno-determinist dogma appears to bind our society. Beyond imaginaries of robotically assisted and real-time monitored ageing, I examine how these new forms of kinship can serve us in realising “desirable” futures with the depth and aspirations so many have for ageing-in-place.

2024, Conference Proceedings
Exploring Generative Postcard Futures with Older Adults ︎

Sheahan, J., Cardamone, E., Vines, J.

NordiCHI 2024, Uppsala, Sweden.

Speculative approaches to technology-enabled ageing futures often struggle against reductive and immaterial imaginaries that diverge from everyday realities, a challenge being compounded by the mainstream embrace of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools. We detail emergent findings from a series of workshops employing a generative postcard approach with a local community group in Scotland. The workshops captured precarious visions, generational perspectives, and potential ways of reconfiguring care futures. We highlight how the techno-deterministic visions of generative AI are both a feature and tool for critique as we link ageing futures with everyday realities.

2024, Conference Proceedings
Designing with Friction: Troubling the Development of Seamless Digital Technologies ︎

Sheahan, J., Chatting, D., Collins., R., Bley, J., Eriksson, A., Rozendaal, M.C., Taylor, N.

NordiCHI 2024, Uppsala, Sweden.

There is growing unease and a sense within the design community of the value placed on efficient, simplified, and seamless interactions, with a growing awareness and documentation of their unintended consequences across society. By prioritizing ‘frictionless’ finance, healthcare, education products, and services, there has been a consorted effort to reduce or eliminate our daily frictions in the pursuit of efficiency and ease of use. In seeking a more balanced understanding of friction in systems design, this workshop will offer ways of bringing friction to the fore of design and examining its role across the domains of care, privacy, security, repairability, and autonomous vehicles.

2024, Journal Article
Factors influencing seniors’ anxiety in using ICT ︎

Reid, M., Aleti, T., Figueiredo, B., Sheahan, J., Hjorth, L., Martin, D.M., Buschgens, M.


Social Sciences

The ability of older adults to engage with information and communication technologies (ICT) is crucial in today’s more digital and connected world. Drawing on consumer behaviour and ICT frameworks and a quantitative survey of 706 older Australian adults, this paper examines factors influencing anxiety in engaging with ICT. Our findings show that perceived anxiety was associated with increased subjective norms or when others placed pressure on older people to engage more with ICT and when older adults perceived increased risks associated with ICT engagement. The results highlight the importance of building, renewing, and reinforcing digital competencies in older consumers

2024, Conference Proceedings
Eliciting Network & Ecologies of Care in Later Life ︎

Sheahan, J., Wilson, C., Pschetz, L., Dixon, B., Vines, J.

Design4Health Conference, Sheffield

While a large body of research has documented people’s experiences of care in later life, very little of this work has explored the complex networks and entanglements of care people experience in old age. This study draws inspiration from the expanding use of care concepts like ecologies and entanglements to unravel complex care relations, offering valuable insights for design considerations. Sent to 18 older adults across Scotland, the probe encouraged reflections on daily life, leading to revelations about care expectations, preparedness, and meaningful design possibilities within caringscapes.