A Day as a youth is a toolkit to empathize with younger generation, it is part of the TANGO project. TANGO is a European level culture project, contemporary, sustainable and accessible design meets different audiences of different age groups. The project brings forth issues of creativity, social design and sustainability, and promotes intergenerational dialogue in three countries: Finland, France, and Italy. This empathic methodology have been develop during the Nantes Workshop in 2012 by, Sara Kahönnen, Marine Belluet, Lucie Boudet and Sylvine Derre

1. ADAYAS
a YOUTH
EMPATHY TOOLKIT
OLDER GENERATIONS
EMPATHISING WITH DIGITAL NATIVES
AND BROADER CHALLENGES OF
GENERATION Z

4. LIFEDOE
GROW O

5. ESN’T
OLD
La vraie jeunesse ne s’use pas.
On a beau l’appeler souvenir,
On a beau dire qu’elle disparaît,
On a beau dire et vouloir dire que
tout s’en va,
Tout ce qui est vrai reste là.
Quand la vérité est laide, c’est une bien
fâcheuse histoire,
Quand la vérité est belle, rien ne ternit
son miroir.
Les gens très âgés remontent en enfance
Et leur coeur bat
Là ou il n’y a pas d’autrefois.
La vie n’a pas d’âge.
Jacques Prévert

7. Linking tow generation can be a challenge as their references
and interests are differents. But relations between gener-­
ations are important to share knowledges and know-­how.
Today linking generations is a social and economic challenges
that is taking day after day a bigger part on our way of living.
This toolkit will help you to empathise and innovate in order to
bring solutions to erase the gap between older and younger.
Your own experiences can help you to understand, how to link
two generations.
By comparing those experiences you will get a wider point of
view, this toolkit will help you to analyse and use those when
designing.
For the need of this toolkit we choose to focus this example
on the relations between seniors and generation Z, tweens, as
the gap betweens those is wider. But you can use this toolkit
also for empathising in other situations.
WHY THIS EMPATHIC
TOOLKIT
GENERATION Z
Is the generation born after the Millennial Generation and which
is currently being born. As they are born in an over connected
society they are used to play, watch, and use connected devices.

8. HOW TO USE THIS
TOOLKIT
Working in a team of at least four people with different
backgrounds can help you to achieve a more objective and
innovative analyse.
This toolkit is a one day experience that can be improved by
spending more time on it.
Follow the steps by reading the guide line and our experience
then use the tips to improve the experience and its result.
B

9. BRAIN
STORMING
TO SHARE INFORMATIONS AND DEFINE
THE SUBJECT YOU ARE WORKING ON.

10. Brain storm your experiences. Every details you remind can
be subject to innovation. Objects, words, feelings, stories,
taste, smell, list everything and group them by theme.
OUR EXPERIENCE
-­
ation Z and seniors and compare their way of life.
For us, this was a very good way to start. We didn’t try to block stereotypes
away. We found differences but also similarities between generation Z and
seniors.
Generation Z seems to be more group orientated and technology makes
a big difference. Generation Z often does multiple things at the same
time. For example, they can chat in the internet with five friends and do their
homework at the same time. Seniors way of life seems to be slower. Activities
often remain the same but the media changes.

11. TIPS
Use Interviews, ads, chats, specialised websites to complete
your study. Focus your reasearch on the groupe of ages you
are working on
Our conclusion of this step was that actually, tweens and seniors are more
int the society.

12. R

13. REMEMBEr
THROW YOUR PERSONAL IDEAS,
FEELINGS, MEMORIES ...

14. Remember what were your own experiences
with your grandparents. Think about good and
bad memories and go deeper into details.
TIPS
Use questions such as : «What did you talked
about?», «How did you feel?», «Do you remember
some smells?», «What did you eat?»
First the things that we came up were quite general. But it was really
important to go into the details.
Here are some examples what we remembered: dry cookies, darkness,
TV on, discussion about the weather, gossips about family, silence in the
discussion.
OUR EXPERIENCE

15. Go back to different stages of your life
and try to remember yourself when
you were young.
TIPS
Let you guide by details as : What you were
wearing, what were your hobbies?
Story telling, we got back to our past and remembered what it was to
spend a day with our grandparents. Then we told them to each other. For
us sharing the memories was really important because it pushed us to go
deeper into details.
OUR EXPERIENCE

17. DRAWINg
ILLUSTRATE YOUR PERSONAL
EXPERIENCE

18. the time to get inspired by the details and the atmosphere. Then draw a
picture of a place you remember from your childhood.
TIPS
Do you remember the furniture? The colors? The
lights? The paterns? The matrials?
new view to the subject. It was interesting to realise how well
you can remember the place even if you haven’t visited it for
a while.
But are these real memories? How can we tell that it’s real and not just our
imagination? Does it make a difference if it is important to us?
OUR EXPERIENCE

19. Compare the pictures and analyse their common points and
objectiv.
This is a way to remember more details and to prepare you to
the acting step.
This was very interesting because we found out that our memories of
our grandparents place were quite similar. Some of the things remain the
same no matter where you are.
These things were quite similar: sofas, lamps, plants on the table, frames
on the wall, dark atmosphere, old furniture
It’s interesting to see that in some pictures you can
imagine that you are in the middle of it while others remain quite distant.
OUR EXPERIENCE

21. AcTING
PUT YOURSELF INTO THE SKIN OF SOMEBODY ELSE

22. Use the informations that you collect during the previous
steps tu create the atmosphere of the environment.
TIPS
Write down 5 general points which will help you
to improvise.

23. OUR EXPERIENCE
Regular:
gave information about spoken things. The conversation was
the key point in this.
Without speaking:
the body language is very important and this really came
through here.
Speaking nonsense:
Here we could almost understand what the other one is
trying to say, and we found out that also different tones
matter a lot.
Are the words really important at all or is it more about
gestures, voice tones and body language? Why did the
granddaughter lean away from her grandmother?
How does the granddaughter react when the
grand mother is offering her some cookies? Do
they have a real conversation? Are they inter-­
ested in each others lives?
We found acting in different ways very useful because they gave different
points of view. We really recommend you to try different methods in
acting.

24. OUR EXPERIENCE
Wathever we were saying the same things was happening each one of us
were reapeating the same scheme. But things we didn’t notice during our
previous examination appears.
the atmosphere, the intonation
Act the scene you prepare and record it to be
able to analyse the video.

25. BRING YOUR EXPERIENCE AND
ANALYSE TO AN INNOVATIVE AND
HUMAN CENTERED CONCEPT
CoNCLUSION

26. Keep analysing and being intesrested by the subject. Give an
interest to the news but mostly to your own experiences and
make those informations useful to you.
Keep in mind that everything you can notice can be subject to
an innovation!

27. like these two weren’t really interested in each other lives. They almost
speak two different languages, and didn’t really bother to try to under-­
stand each other.
OUR EXPERIENCE
We came to conclusion that both generation should be linked by a simple
way of communication that allow each generation to share their interest
with the other member of his family. As a family tree it could allow not
only to share common ancesters but common hobbies, or just to stay up
dated!

29. TANGO is a European level culture project, contemporary,
sustainable and accessible design meets different audiences
of different age groups. The project brings forth issues of
creativity, social design and sustainability, and promotes
intergenerational dialogue in three countries: Finland, France,
and Italy.
The two-­year (2011-­2013) collaborative project is a mutual
endeavour of Aalto University (Helsinki), L’École de design
Nantes Atlantique and Politecnico di Milano, funded by the
Culture 2013 program of the European Union.
This empathic methodology have been develop during the
Nantes Workshop in 2012 by, Sara Kahönnen, Marine Belluet,
Lucie Boudet and Sylvine Derre