Keywords: Helping Others, Learning, Religion, Peace, Life, Love

Helping others to understand myself better. Continue to self-educate, including learning art therapy, dedicating my life to Buddhism (Peace and inner calm). Going back to nature and living a simple life, smooth in all directions, have a loving heart. The colours I used represents the sky, the earth, and the surroundings. There is also a heart on the top! It’s green because that’s my favourite colour!  

-Ms Emily Low, 53, Singaporean

Self-employed, Counsellor

Keywords: Work

To continue working in SIA Engineering Company as I am retiring this August. Hence, I built the control tower of Changi Airport. 

-Mr Tan, 66, Singaporean

Full-time, Senior Technician

Keywords: Happiness, Home

To have a happy home. 

-Mdm Heng, 65, Singaporean

Not-employed, Housewife

Keywords: Work, Money

I want to pass this final examination to earn a professional certificate for my job. Only then can I earn a lot of money. 

-Mr Barry Kwong, 60, Singaporean

Semi-retired, Construction Industry

Keywords: Regret, Family, Happiness

My unrealised ambition is to buy a Ferrari Dino. My dream is to see my boys live happy and rewarding lives. 

-Scratch Nelson, 57, US Citizen

Full-time, Marketing & Sales

Keywords: Work, Money

I want to to have an apartment that faces the sea. When I was young, I wanted to go to university, but I was unable to. I want to attend an university for seniors when I retire. I want to learn photography and learn how to dance to keep fit! 

-Ms Poon Siu Ha, 57, Singaporean

Self-employed, Taxi Driver

When we were young, we always wanted a place of our own. 

-Mr Yow & Ms Jessica Tan, 56 & 58, Singaporean

Full-time, Managers (shipping)

Keywords: Memories, Housing

Consolidating My Findings

After collecting the results from my participants, I extracted keywords from the artefacts, drawings, and the descriptions. A word cloud was created to  see which of these keywords appear more often than others. From the word cloud, I found out that most of these adults want to travel, be financially stable, be healthy and happy.

Often in times, we hear parents and grandparents asking their children or grandchildren about their wants and desires, but we seldom heard of the question being asked the other way around. In the midst of conducting this experiment, I realised what I had been doing was actually creating intergenerational understanding between the participants and their children. As most of the probe kits were passed to my peers to conduct the experiment with their parents. Discussions and conversations arose during the making of the artefacts. Some of them even turned it into a family bonding session where they were building and drawing together.

I am really happy with the end results that I managed to get from the participants. Many of them were really creative and went beyond my expectations. I really enjoyed doing this “mini project” as part of my research! 

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