Current Research Projects
Current Research Projects
Continuous Improvement and Innovation: Unheard Consumer Lived Experience
Listening to Unheard Consumers to Improve Service Experiences
This project focuses on understanding consumer experience of support services and programs to understand what matters most and how those aspects contribute to the experience. These insights are considered in co-design processes intended to identify and flesh-out opportunities to improve and innovate. These opportunities are then trialed in partnership with providers, regulators and consumers to assess experience and impact.
The project aims to:
- Support providers and policymakers in designing person-centered improvements that respond to real voices.
- Identify what comprises the experience and drives satisfaction with a view evaluating those components to indentify opportunities for change.
- Capture qualitative insights to explain and interpret evaluations of experiences to drive mechanisms for change.
- Understand individual constructions of experience and how cultural, emotional, relational and access shape experiences and assessments.
Ultimately, this work strengthens the role of unheard consumers in shaping the quality of support they receive, ensuring their experiences are not only heard but acted upon.
Connect with us about this project: here
Exploring the meaning of Ageing Well in a Person’s preferred living environment and how to support that.
Our Ageing in Place project is a collaborative initiative focused on understanding how elderly individuals can live independently, safely, meaningfully, and comfortably in their chosen place and community. At the heart of this project is ongoing engagement with consumers, families, carers, and professional researchers/industry partners. Through interviews, workshops, and co-design activities, we work together to uncover how different people construct the meaning of ageing in place, shaped by different aspects such as personal experiences, living situations, cultural background, and care needs.
The project seeks to:
- Build a comprehensive understanding of what different people mean when they say they want to “age at home” (in place, in community), why it is important to them, and what comprises this experience.
- Identify perceived enablers and constraints that affect the ability to successfully age in place at micro (e.g. individual), meso (e.g. community) and macro (e.g. policy) levels.
- Co-create practical ideas and strategies with participants to support diverse visions of ageing in place, respecting dignity, autonomy, and quality of life.
By grounding the project in real experiences and collective insight, we aim to shape responsive solutions that reduce barriers and help elderly individuals stay connected and empowered in the places they call home.
Connect with us about this project: here
Impact Studies: Assessing the impact of service interventions
Impact studies identify the changes that intended for a particular program and then design the research and the measure to comprehensively assess impact (benefits and costs). Assessing impact helps us understand whether policies and programs improve lives, especially for vulnerable populations. It provides evidence for decision-making, funding, and service design through structured research and human-centred methods. This approach ensures that change efforts are grounded in what matters most: stakeholder outcomes, wellbeing, and real-world outcomes.
Case Study: Residential Respite & Transition Care
This project explores the lived experience and benefits of aged care respite services. These play a critical role in supporting recipients’ recovery, relieving carers’ load, and preventing premature entry into residential care. We engage directly with consumers, families, carers, and service providers to understand how people experience these services, including ‘what works’, ‘what feels disconnected’, and ‘where improvements are most needed’.
The project aims to:
- Examine how respite and transition care are understood and experienced across different contexts and care pathways, in order to inform the impact of these programs.
- Gather insights that can inform service design, delivery, and policy by grounding in the voices of those who use and provide care
By focusing on lived experience, this project contributes to a deeper understanding of how short-term care can better meet the needs of elderly individuals and those who support them.
Connect with us about this project: here
Technology Experience and Adoption: Ageing People
This project investigates how elderly individuals engage with and adopt technology in their daily lives, from digital health tools and home safety devices to social apps and everyday tech like smartphones and smart TVs.
Through collaboration with ageing individuals, carers, families, and technology providers, the study explores:
- How elderly individuals perceive, access, and learn to use different technologies
- The social dynamics that influence adoption include encouragement from family, peer support, stigma, and cultural expectations.
- The ways technology can support independence, connection, and wellbeing when it is designed with ageing users in mind
By placing social context and living experience at the centre of our research, we aim to co-create more inclusive strategies that truly support ageing-friendly places and reduce digital exclusion.
Case Study: The Importance of Experiencing Technology
Ageing consumers are generally unlikely to adopt technology. This project explores the impact of exposing ageing consumers to different technologies, either briefly or on an ongoing basis. Via a Living Lab ageing consumers experience interacting with technology and can then opt to trial the technology on an ongoing basis. This engagement changes the nature of the ageing consumers response to the technology by removing many of the unknowns, revealing whether it solves actual needs and forcing a deeper construal of the technology (i.e., more proximal forcing a more genuine assessment of adoption).
Connect with us about this project: here
Email: unheardconsumer@curtin.edu.au
Phone: 92663875
Live Experience Lab (B402.416)
Curtin University, 208 Kent Street, Bentley, WA 6102