The Aging & Design course series is an interdisciplinary, intergenerational, and cross-cultural initiative at Drexel University focused on aging, design and immigrant communities in Philadelphia. It is offered to both undergraduate and graduate students across the University spanning multiple colleges from design, healthcare, biomedical engineering, entrepreneurship, Honors’ College and more.

This is a 10-week course that encourages students from across campus to imagine and create products, strategies, and/or services for older persons of the Asian community in Philadelphia, culminating in a design competition and exhibition at the end of the course.

The course is structured around three main components:

  • Community-Based Participatory Design—An approach to design where empathizing with end users to co-create solutions that are both inclusive and sensitive to their needs, experiences, and perspectives. By taking a build-to-learn approach, students gain real-time feedback while continually evolving their design.

  • Understandings of Culture and Agism—Evaluating and addressing cultural awareness, implicit bias, and ageism in the context of an increasingly diverse older population, fostering inclusivity and sensitivity in design approaches.

  • Entrepreneurship— Students develop a comprehensive roadmap for commercialization, which includes problem-solving, solution development, testing, lean business model creation, team building, advisor and partner acquisition, funding strategy development, and investment pitching.

Course Series

Interested in registering for the Aging & Design course series, being a faculty/community collaborator, or getting involved with the Empathic CoDesign Lab?

Contact Professor June He at jh3943@drexel.edu