Ageing in communal place : ethnographic studies of social interaction in senior housing communities

In this paper we adopt the position that design of social media for the elderly and virtual senior communities may be informed by studying `real´senior communities. Since current research efforts target the role of social media and virtual communities for supporting seniors ageing in place, i.e. in their homes, housing communities seems a natural place to begin this enquiry. We conducted observations and informal interviews in six different senior dwellings. In this paper we present the key findings from these visits related to social interaction and the formation of communities and explicate how these findings apply to designers of social media technologies.