Dexter Senior Living Home
Short Description.
timeline:
May 2026 - now
Service Design
User Research
The Brief
During the summer of 2026, I worked as a design research intern at the d-mix lab, a lab whose mission is to shape a longevity society by mixing design (d-) with evidence-based research, service innovation, and emergent technologies. I was supervised and mentored by Dr. Sheng Hung Lee as we collaborated with Dexter Senior Center, based in Dexter, MI, to rethink their senior nutrition programs.
my role
Becoming a researcher
This project with Dexter Senior Center is expected to run 2 years; however, my involvement was primarily in the research and early ideation stage, where I conducted market research, built a design research toolkit, facilitated a user research workshop, synthesized data, and more.
• phase 1
Project Initiation + Community Baseline Assessment
Build partnership and understand the community needs and service gaps.
• phase 2
Systems Mapping and Pilot Strategy Development
Identify system barriers and intervention opportunities
• phase 3
Pilot Testing and Service Prototyping
Test and refine service interventions
• phase 4
Evaluation and Strategic Framework Development
Evaluate impact and scalability
• phase 5
Dissemination and Sustainability Planning
Share findings and support long-term adoption
context
A partnership with Dexter Senior Center
Talk about pain points
Introduce Anna and her quote
The collaboration aims to develop and test a scalable model that integrates service design
pre-research (idk how to say background research)
Understanding… elderly care, food delivery models, etc.
Put my pre-research I did (case studies)
To help identify the specific gaps within the Dexter Senior Center… we then conducted a workshop
workshop
Working with the seniors directly
Flying to Michigan directly
Design Consent Form, Pre + Post workshop survey (Learning design constraints of seniors, large text + high contrast)
Workshop flow
Insert images
synthesis
Sticky notes are our best friends
Organized sticky notes that cataloged user experience
Made observations, thought about both the workshop experience and the dining experience
findings
Our research paper is being published…
Point people to research paper
reflection
Give my thoughts on this experience type…
thoughts thoughts thoughts…