Vital Involvement: Design for Active Aging

Abstract

Vital Involvement (VI) in older adulthood is a construct that underlies multiple aspects of elder well-being, engagement, activity, and psychosocial health. Designers’ term “active aging” fits well within this construct, and it offers a social-science and developmental scaffolding on which to “hang”/“pin” many elements of designing (e.g., clothing, accessories, objects, spaces, and social structures) to promote wellbeing in older adults. VI provides a set of ideas, goals, and criteria that can enable professionals to conceptualize designing in order to help elders remain actively, meaningfully engaged. In addition, designing for VI can encourage increasing numbers of older adults to become more engaged, and to experience associated increased wellbeing. The VI construct complements growing interest, in the fields of bio-ethics and citizenship, in what makes a “good life” in older adulthood.

Keywords:

• vital involvement,
• VI,
• active aging,
• person-environment,
• life cycle,
• design

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Helen Q. Kivnick

Helen Kivnick, Ph.D. is the primary developer of Vital Involvement Practice, strength-based approach to working with older adults (e.g., programming; teaching; counseling; administration) directed at optimizing elders’ personal vitality and community engagement. She has worked in subsidized senior housing projects for the past seven years, to integrate Vital Involvement promotion skills and principles into the practice repertoire and requirement of site-based Service Coordinators. A trained psychologist and avocational musician, Kivnick lectures widely and has published four books on the topics of promoting healthy life-cycle development, the arts, and intercultural relations—including Vital Involvement in Old Age, co-authored with Erik H. Erikson and Joan M. Erikson. She has been a Professor of Social Work at the University of Minnesota since 1990. She was the founding editor of the Humanities and Arts section of The Gerontologist, where she currently edits the On Film and Digital Media section [email protected].