Housing for the elderly has become a pressing issue where the challenges of aging populations and sustainable development collide. These challenges can be met by integrating ecological, social, economic, and cultural perspectives into user-centred design. Such interdisciplinary settings highlight wicked problems: complex, shifting issues that resist clear solutions. Cognitive limitations, including restricted working memory and difficulty grasping hidden interdependencies, further complicate sensemaking. This article presents the development of a workshop within the sUser – Introducing User-driven Design and Agile Development Skills in the Case of Sustainable Service Housing for Elderly – project exploring the potential of visual thinking in practice. Visual thinking uses sketches, diagrams, and other visual forms to offload cognitive demands, reveal patterns, and build shared understanding. The workshop emphasises that visual thinking is a natural human ability, unrelated to drawing skill, and demonstrates simple methods for structuring complexity and fostering collaboration. The findings suggest that visual thinking is a versatile cognitive strategy, valuable not only in interdisciplinary design for sustainable elderly housing but also as a general aid for reasoning across domains.
Suni et al. (Wed,) studied this question.