This week we have started to work with all segments of Valderrubio population in order to get used to each age group life habits. Thus we have been able to identify those habits that do not help our brain health. Once these habits have been identified we have focused on searching solutions for the entire population.

We have use Design Thinking to detect these needs involving children, teenagers and adults in our work groups. We have specialized on several age groups by putting ourselves in the shoes of each group by using an empathy map: How do they think? What do they say? What do they feel? These have been the key questions identifying our locality lifestyles.

This experience has been conducted with boys and girls, teenagers, young adults, adults and elderly people. This diversity allows us to readjust our actions according to our context and thus we will be able to extrapolate our conclusions to other localities.

The empathy map allowed us to identify clearly the locality issues and actively deal with our cognitive functions development and health. Afterwards, we proposed many ideas by unleashing our creativity and, of course, thinking out of the box to get innovative ideas. We validated our ideas and selected those that we were going to prototype in our locality. With that purpose, we were advised by our neuropsychologists (Paula Iglesias and Laura Collado) on end ideas selection.

This has been a lovely creative process and as a result our ideas are innovative and viable. We can’t wait to put them on practice. We will update you about our ‘Neuroactive City’ or how our students like to call ‘Neuroland’.