Category: Co-design processes

Articles and research on co-design and co-creation methods

Co-designing for the digital world

If you want to create something really useful for intended users, asking them to participate in the design process is a good way to go. And that means the design of anything – guides and toolkits included. From Ireland comes a toolkit for co-designing for the digital world where participants are people with intellectual disability.

A series of iterative workshops involving people with intellectual disability formed the foundation of an accessible design toolkit.

A collage of faces from around the world and pictures of smartphones. co-design for the digital world.

Co-design is important in the area of digital design and computer interaction. However, projects that claim to be user-centred often become technology led rather than user driven. A university in Ireland teamed up with a community service that supports people with intellectual disability. With the guidance of researchers, computer science students and community service users engaged in a co-creation process from which a toolkit was developed.

The collaboration highlighted the need for accessible design resources and training materials for both students and users. While there are many resources on co-design processes, and design thinking, few address people with intellectual disability. Those that do exist are not accessible or suitable for people with intellectual disability.

The toolkit is about co-designing with people with intellectual disability. Two overarching principles emerged. Use simple English with short sentences and simpler grammatical structures. Provide visual aids – icons and images – to overcome literacy limitations.

The paper explains the co-creation process in detail. The authors call the users co-designers, which is confusing because co-design usually means all participants including designers.

Understanding the complex process of consent to participate had to be resolved for the users. Another difficulty was encouraging participants speak up about design flaws or issues.

The title of the paper is, An Inclusive Co-Design Toolkit for the Creation of Accessible
Digital Tools.

From the abstract

Existing toolkits and resources to support co-design are not always accessible to designers and co-designers with disabilities. We present a study of a co-design process, where computer science students worked with service users with intellectual disabilities. The aim was to create digital applications together.

A series of co-design focus group sessions were conducted with service users previously involved in a co-design collaboration. The information from these sessions was used to devise an accessible design toolkit. This toolkit is intended to generate a sustainable resource to be reused in the student programme at TU Dublin but also in the wider community of inclusive design.

Editor’s comment: Most guides and toolkits are based on well-researched evidence, but the value of the evidence is sometimes lost in technicalities or too many words. A co-design process will seek out the key information that guideline users want and need.

Designing technology for all

one hand is holding a smart phone and the other is pointing at the screen.

It’s not just a matter of fairness. Technology is generally better for everyone if it’s designed for people with disability. People who are blind use the same smartphones as sighted people. They also use computers by using screen readers. But screen readers can’t improve the way websites are designed. A website that causes problems for a screen reader is likely to be more difficult for anyone. So designing for disability is designing technology for all. That’s universal design.

An article in The Conversation explains the issues in more detail. One of the issues for web designers is that prototyping software is not compatible with screen readers. Consequently they can’t get blind users to test their designs. It also means a blind designer wouldn’t be able to make mock-ups of their own.

The researchers said that accessibility is the hallmark of good technology. Many technologies that we take for granted were developed around disability. The article concludes that no matter how much empathy a designer has, it doesn’t replace the benefits of technology built by people who actually use it. 

The title of the article is, “Why getting more people with disabilities developing technology is good for everyone”.

See a screen reader in action in a previous post.Ā 

Inclusive energy efficient home renovations

A case study from the Netherlands describes an inclusive process for designing energy-efficient home renovations. A neighbourhood of 280 apartments is the subject of the study. With a mix of homeowners, renters and social housing tenants, it was essential to involve residents in the renovation process.

Several tall apartment buildings situated next to a canal. Energy efficient home renovations.

Involving residents in major renovations is essential for bringing together the technical and social aspects of design.

The principles of civic and energy justice underpinned the approach to the project. Given that the resulting designs will largely be the same for every home, they need to be inclusive and considerate of ongoing energy costs for everyone. That means an inclusive design process is required.

Participatory action research

Expert stakeholders and six residents were interviewed and 50 residents were observed and interviewed during a tour of the demonstration apartment. Mutual learning was a key part of the iterative process involving prototypes.

Attention was paid to diversity, accessibility of research materials and interview materials were both verbal and visual. Technical design features were part of the results, but values emerged from the process. These values were health, sustainability, property value, cost of living and comfort.

The paper goes into more detail on the findings and the process. As part of the process, researchers developed a renovation guide to help residents understand what the proposed changes mean for them. They acknowledged time constraints which meant residents did not have time to experience the apartment. Rather, they only had time to view it.

Recommendations

Recommendations for improving the process include:

  • Location. Any sessions should be in the neighbourhood and in an accessible venue.
  • Time. Different meeting and interview times will suit different people.
  • Invitations. The guide acts as an invitation but might not work for everyone.
  • Language. Dutch is a second language for some people so a session in English might be necessary.
  • Other options. Apart from meetings, phone and email should be available. Not everyone feels comfortable in a group.

The lessons from the paper could be applied in housing situations such as social housing and co-housing. It also adds to the literature on inclusive design and co-design, and participatory action research.

The title of the article is, Values arising from participatory inclusive design in a complex process. There are diagrams to illustrate the complexity of designing an entire home and it’s technical systems, indoor climate, the lives and values of residents, and connection to systems and services.

From the abstract

This paper addresses inclusive design in a situation of complexity and how to improve it. The focus is on the inclusive design of a complex process and its tools, which is increasingly an issue in systemic design challenges. The current situation of climate change means we need to work on sustainability and inclusion at the same time.

The paper presents a case study of an energetic renovation process and the stakeholdersā€™ activities and views in it. In a research-through-design process, the paper traces the possibilities to intervene in the process with communication tools to increase inclusivity of both process and outcomes.

Energy efficiency and universal design

Are energy efficiency and universal design incompatible? Potentially. Energy efficiency has an engineering approach and universal design has a sociological approach. This is what makes them incompatible according to researchers in Belgium. Energy efficiency is a measurable product whereas universal design is a process. So how can they both be addressed in home renovations?Ā  This was the topic of a conference paper in 2016.

Thinking has moved on and we now talk about sustainability from both perspectives and the importance of having both. However, this paper brings the concepts into the same conversation and highlights areas of potential conflict. The paper has some interesting and explanatory graphs and comparisons that are worth a look especially for academics and theorists.Ā 

Roof of a house covered in solar panels

The title of the paper is, Energy Efficiency and Universal Design in Home Renovations – A Comparative Review

Essential elements of co-design

Ayoung man with a black beard and hair is talking to someone across a table with coloured paper and pens. We need elements of co-design.Co-design in an academic context is part of participatory action research, or PAR. It’s used to understand, inform and change the design of policies, programs and services. But what are the essential elements of co-design?

As we know, community engagement or consultation is not the same as co-design. Including diverse stakeholder and user perspectives is essential for developing best practice.

Gabrielle Brand and her team have identified five core co-design principles in the field of health education. Briefly they are: inclusive, respectful, participative, iterative and outcomes focused. These principles apply in other fields too.Ā 

Core co-design principlesĀ 

Inclusive: Involve key industry stakeholders and consumers from the initial proposal design. That includes the development and framing of learning focus to final educational outcome and delivery.

Respectful: Health care consumers are considered “experts by experience”. All input is equally valued in design, development and delivery of education.

Participative: The research process is open, responsive and empathetic in co-creating education. It generates new understandings of health and healthcare experiences.

Iterative: A cyclic, collaborative process that takes time. It embraces movement towards a shared education vision. It includes the risk of failure.

Outcomes focused: The focus is on achieving a shared educational outcome co-created during the co-design process.

Brand and her team used conversational interviews transcribed verbatim for analysis. An organic iterative approach to data analysis developed shared understandings. Artefacts were also used in the process for eliciting sensory triggers for participants and for developing vignettes.Ā 

The article details part of a vignette to explain how it was used with learners. It’s based on a mother of an adult son with a psychosocial condition. Members of the research team benefited from knowing they had valuable and legitimate expertise on a research project.Ā 

Title of the article is, A research approach for co-designing education with healthcare consumers. It has a mental health education focus, but the methods are applicable in other fields.Ā 

One of the issues with co-design and PAR is passing ethics approval processes. When an ethics committee labels particular groups as ‘vulnerable’ they apply different approval criteria. However, including the voices of a broad range of people involves the participation of vulnerable groups.Ā 

The end result of this kind of research is to “transform hierarchical health care relationships towards a more humanistic model of care”.Ā 

From the abstract

Context: Community and consumer involvement in health professions education (HPE) is of growing interest among researchers and educators. It prepares health care graduates to effectively learn from, and collaborate with, people with lived experience of health issues.Ā 

Approach: We describe the background to our work with health care consumers including the five core principles for successful co-design and how to apply them as a research approach in HPE.

We used arts and humanities-based teaching methodologies including engagement, meaning-making and translational education strategies. This illustrates how this research approach has been applied to reframe mental health education and practice in Australia. Furthermore, we share some reflective insights on the opportunities and challenges inherent in using a co-design research approach in HPE.

Conclusions: For the consumer voice to be embedded across HPE, there needs to be a collective commitment to curriculum redesign. This paper advances our understandings of the educational research potential of working with health care consumers to co-design rich and authentic learning experiences in HPE.

Co-design research approaches that partner with and legitimise health care consumers as experts by experience may better align education and health professional practice with consumersā€™ actual needs, an important first step in transforming hierarchical health care relationships towards more humanistic models of care.

Assoc Prof Gabrielle Brand is based at Monash University Peninsula Campus.

Health professional education research

Two New Zealand researchers in health science say it is time to apply universal design principles to health education research. They take the universal design principles that originated in architecture and translate them to universal design for research.

The researchers use theĀ The three pillars of universal design for learning (UDL) as the means to crosswalk from architecture to research. The aim is to embrace and enact diversity in research design. This, of course, means engagement with people most often excluded from health education research.Ā 

The title of the article is,Ā  Designing for justice: How universal design theory could bolster health professional education research.

 

QDN’s Co-design principles

Front cover of QDN Co-design priniciples.Co-design is the new buzzword in the field of disability. But co-design isn’t only about disability inclusion. It’s a design process that seeks the best design for the intended users. Including people from a diversity of backgrounds, ages, levels of capability and experience is good practice. It’s how you do universal design. But what is it exactly and how does it work?Ā  The ultimate in co-design is to include users from design concept stage. The next best thing is to include users in testing the first prototype. Many design firms say budget and time constraints prevent them from implementing this highly iterative method. But how much does it cost to remedy poor design and lack of compliance?Ā  Co-design should not be confused with community consultation which seeks opinions about a design.Ā User testing is not a form of co-design either. Co-design is where designers and users share the power of designing together. Co-design processes work for developing products, buildings, websites, services, policies and guidelines. Queenslanders with Disability Network (QDN) have published their Co-Design Principles. This document obviously focuses on people with disability and the Queensland context. Regulation, legislation and policies such as the state disability plan fill most pages.Ā  Ā Five values underpin QDN’s co-design principles and processes:
      • Authentic Voice ā€“ We ensure those with limited or no voice are heard and valued
      • Collaborative Action ā€“ We learn from collective experiences, values, and wisdomĀ 
      • Rights ā€“ We believe in a human rights approachĀ 
      • Respect ā€“ We value human difference and diversityĀ 
      • Resilience ā€“ We are here for the long term.

Co-design processes

A three page summary has the key points above and the co-design processes.Ā  The starting place ā€“ Craft the question that reflects intent/purpose and invites inquiry.Ā  Build the team ā€“ Get diversity and support inclusion Discovery Phase ā€“ See the issue from different viewpoints, and perspectives. Hear from others including those who disagree Pause and Reflect ā€“ Take time to pause and reflect on what you have learnt in the discovery phase and what you still donā€™t know before jumping to solutions Sense-making ā€“ Look at the data, story, research, and evidence in their raw form and work together to make sense and meaning of what has been gathered Generate options – Stage where sense-making starts to yield conclusions, ideas and possibilities, and people get in the creative zone Developing Prototypes ā€“ Generate as many ideas as possible and develop a working example of the policy, service, program, product, or scenario-based solution Learning, reworking, and refining ā€“ Part of the learning cycle and reworks can produce ā€˜prototypeā€™ ā€“ the solution for testing, piloting, or putting into action Embed what works ā€“ Turn it into action and make it real. Keep people engaged and stay accountable. The QDN website has more information about the organisation and their activities. See other articles on co-design: The right to participate in co-design, and What does co-design mean? How does it work?Ā 

Consulting people with disability

Front cover Consulting with persons with disabilities.
Full guidelines
Consulting people with disability just needs careful planning. Yes, of course it takes time, but all consultation takes time. But it is always worth it because it saves time in rectifications later.Ā  The United Nations Inclusion Strategy has guidelines for consulting persons with disabilities. The main guideline document is very detailed and links with the UN Convention Indicator 5. It covers representative organisations, when to consult, and how to do it. The Easy Read version is very helpful for everyone.Ā   
Front cover of Easy Read Guide Consulting people with disability.
Easy Read version
The Easy Read version has the key information. It covers the importance of consulting, taking part in decisions, and working with representative organisations. There are links to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals with the promise of “leave no one behind”.Ā  One key point in this version is that people with disability should be involved in decisions about everything – not just things to do with disability.Ā   

Some days don’t have 24 hours

Lots of clock faces piled on top of each other showing different times. Week has seven days and every day has 24 hours. We all know that. But some people don’t have the same amount of time available within 24 hours as others. And it isn’t a case of poor time management. Time gets stolen. So what does it mean when I say, “some days don’t have 24 hours”? Sheri Byrne-Haber pinpoints the issues in her article in Medium about the disability time thief. Sometimes it’s a few moments here and there, and sometimes it a regular chunk.Ā  This article shows why consulting with people with disability is not a matter of setting a date and time and sending out the invitation. The time of day and the place are really important considerations.Ā  The title of Byrne-Haber’s article is We don’t all have the same 24 hours. Anyone who thinks that we do lives in a monster privilege bubble.  

What does Co-design mean? How does it work?

Two men look at a document. One is a doctor the other is a patient. The term co-design is being used more frequently, but what does co-design mean and how does it work? Well, that depends on the context. It could mean a design group working together. Nothing difficult about that concept. Or it could mean involving end users in the design process. This is where it gets more tricky and more questions arise.

At what point do you involve users? Which users do you involve? Will the users have the required knowledge and experience to contribute constructively? Will designers have the skills to be inclusive and listen to users? Participatory action research incorporates both designer and user learning. But these projects are necessarily long and usually have research funding attached. However, they usually produce knowledge and results useful in other settings.Ā 

A related concept is co-design in quality improvement, for example, in a hospital setting. Both staff and patients have a role to play in advancing quality improvement. Differing levels of understanding between staff and patients can lead to tokenism. So how can we equalise knowledge so that everyone’s contribution is constructive?Ā 

A research team in a Brisbane hospital grappled with this issue. Their research report is written in academic language and not easy to read. Nevertheless, they conclude that effective patient-staff partnerships require specific skills. Briefly, it means adapting to change, and generating new knowledge for continuous improvement.

A framework

The researches developed a framework that includes ten capabilities under three key headings.Ā 

Diagram of the Co-design Framework.

 

    1. Personal attributes:
      • Dedicated to improving healthcare
      • Self-aware and reflective
      • Confident and flexible

2. Relationships and communication attributes:

      • Working and learning as a team
      • Collaborating and communicating
      • Advocating for everyone

3. Philosophies/Models:

      • Organisational systems & policy
      • Patient and public involvement best practice
      • Quality improvement principles.

These nine points are connected with the overarching theme of sharing power and leadership.

Title of the article is, “Co-produced capability framework for successful patient and staff partnerships in healthcare quality improvement: results of a scoping review”.

Other posts on co-design include The right to participate and co-design, and Co-design is another skill set.Ā 

Videos more effective than policy

A brightly coloured film strip with the word Video on it.Policy is often seen as the way to make change. But when it comes to being inclusive it hasn’t worked very well. If policies, codes and papers are not accessible to all stakeholders, how can we create inclusion? Janice Rieger says videos are more effective than policy.

The title of her short paper and workshop is, Reframing Universal Design: Creating Short Videos for Inclusion. Her research provides insights on how videos travel and reach different audiences. This results in a significant impact and enacted change and informed policy. Dr Rieger concludes that “video impacts more than policies, codes and papers ever can”.Ā 

Here is an extract from her paper:

“Video is a visceral medium, offering the opportunity to reframe universal design practice and education. It captures movements and can be co-created with people with disabilities. Videos co-created for inclusion encourage detailed and rich embodied knowledge and experiences because information is prompted by association with oneā€™s surroundings. Significantly, videos have the capacity to excavate personalized knowledge of those with different abilities and uncover systems of exclusion that are often hidden or naturalized, and shamedly rendered invisible through policies, codes and papers.”

In a short video titled, Wandering on the Braille Trail, Sarah Boulton explains how she navigates the environment using her white cane and tactile ground markers.

 

The right to participate and co-design

A graphic of a group of people including a wheelchair user.How do you include people in decisions that will affect them when it’s not easy for them to participate? It’s a chicken and egg situation. So, asking people with disability to contribute takes more than a survey or a community meeting. It needs a much more thoughtful process. Janice Rieger has some thoughts on the right to participate and co-design polices and processes.

Janice Rieger discusses the issues in relation to the nextĀ National Disability Strategy. Her briefing paper is titled, Right to Participate: Co-designing Disability Policies in Australia. Focusing on process rather than the end product sets the framework to reach a shared understanding. Her three recommendations for co-designing in practice are:

      1. Focus on abilities not disabilities
      2. Employ expertise to help
      3. Value the importance of creative practice

Public sector co-designing is an emerging field of practice. It provides the opportunity for creativity and innovative ideas. Reframing participatory engagement through a social justice lens takes us towards a co-designing process.Ā 

Editorial Introduction

“We are entering a new era in Australia as we envision a new disability strategy to replace the current national disability strategy (2010ā€“2020). During this transition, we can reflect on and recognise the changing disability landscape in Australia and ensure that we create a just and inclusive Australian society.

Recent consultations and reports have called for people with a disability to directly engage in designing the new disability strategy in Australia, but what does that entail, and how will the rights of people with disabilities be upheld throughout this process?

This brief describes public sector co-designing practiceā€”an emerging practice aiming to open up new trajectories for policy development through a co-design process and to provide best practice recommendations for the next disability strategy in Australia.”

Human-centred design playbook

Front cover of the Human-Centred Design Playbook from the Government of Victoria. The cover is dark blue and bright pink with white text. Human-centred design is an approach to problem-solving that puts people at the heart of the process. It’s about empathy with users. This style of approach has the potential to generate more varied ideas for design solutions. It’s more than community engagement – it’s a collaborative and iterative design process. Collaboration and iteration are at the core of a universal design approach.

The Victorian Government’s Human-Centred Design Playbook is specifically for the public sector. And not just those with job descriptions that are about policy, planning and design.Ā 

The aim is to help staff collaborate better with the service design team, service designers, and external design agencies. The guide does some of the thinking in helping to assess options and practical steps for implementing the project.

Taking an iterative approach to design is at the heart of the process. “We iterate because we know that we won’t get it right the first time. Or even the second… it allows us to keep learning.”Ā 

At 100 pages covering methods, design plans, outputs and case studies this playbook has everything. The Digital, Design and Innovation branch of the Department of Premier and Cabinet produced the playbook. It is designed as a starting point for planning and scoping design-based activities.Ā 

You can download a copy of the playbook directly from the website.Ā 

The playbook complements the Victorian Government’s Whole of Government Universal Design Policy.Ā 

Principles of human-centred design

Design consultant David Townson discusses his seven principles of human-centred design in a Design Council blog article. He has spent his career developing products and services to make them work for people. He argues that users are human beings – that includes every human being a design impacts.

New designers often miss this subtle point and focus on a specific primary user, says Townson. And there could be more than one primary user. The factory-workers that make it, the courier that delivers it, the installer, and the mechanic who fixes it. Even the person who disposes it at the end of its life.

“All design should be human centred, itā€™s as simple as that. And I mean human-centred, not ā€˜user-centredā€™ or ā€˜user-friendlyā€™”

David Townson, design consultant

A hand holding a large potato being peeled using an OXO Good Grips vegetable peeler.

7 principles of human-centred design

According to Townson, these are briefly, the seven principles of human-centred design:

Get past your own great idea. Observe the environment in which you are designing, watch people in that environment, talk to people and observe them in shops.

Don’t be restricted by your own knowledge. During the research process ask smart, naive questions. Eliminate all your assumptions and turn them into validated knowledge. Being convinced you know everything isnā€™t conducive to that outcome.

Spend time with real people in real environments. Observation of people is crucial. It is this keen and open-minded observation that triggers off a great idea in the first place. That’s how the famous OXO Good Grips came to be designed.

Identify other users. Following on from the OXO story, the designer discovered that it wasn’t something only his wife needed. They identified expert users – chefs.

Follow your users lead and needs. Chefs wanted it too. But they wanted a blade with steel. So that’s what they did and improved the design.

Think about the whole journey of the product. As a designer you cannot just stop at your primary user as the product has a life before and after that and impacts on people beyond them. Think about what happens during and at the end of the product’s life.

Prototype and test your idea. Prototyping forces you to share your ideas rather than developing them in a vacuum. Seek out people who may have a different take on things allowing you to validate your idea and gain constructive feedback from potential users ā€“ beyond the easy feedback given from family and friends.

For more detail on Townson’s ideas see the Design Council article, Seven tenets of human-centred design.

For interest, here is the OXO story on YouTube.Ā Ā 

Ā 

What is human centred design?

It isn’t just about consulting with humans in the design process. It is about understanding the impact that design has on us as humans. Sarah Williams Goldhagen argues that people undervalue good design.Ā 

A large arched walkway at night with purple bougainvillea flowers overhead. The pathway is well lit but has the line shadows of the arches across it.

There is no such thing as neutral when it comes to design of the built environment. It has either a positive or negative effect on people.

A place should inspire uses and passers by. If it doesn’t support what people need to do then it is eroding wellbeing and impoverishing people’s lives. This is especially the case when you can’t even get into a place or space because it is inaccessible. Goldhagen goes on to say that good design is less about personal taste and more about human bodies and minds. Goldhagen’s article is in the Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health. It is titled, What is Human-Centered Design? Should Anyone Care?Ā 

Co-design with older adults

A creative workshop scene. A woman is holding a pair of scissors, another is holding a pen over paper. Co-design with older adults.Finding out what older adults might want and need in their daily living experiences takes more than just asking them, especially if they have a cognitive impairment. Using creative methods, such as drawing and creating models, older people can express their needs in a tactile format. This also creates rapport with designers who can then devise better mobility, dining and leisure activities. This method is enjoyable for all participants.

The title of the article is,Ā Participatory Design with Older Adults: Exploring the Latent Needs of Young-Old and Middle-Old in Daily Living Using a Universal Design Approach. You will need institutional access for a free read from SpringerLink.

Or ask for a free read through ResearchGate.

From the abstract:

This paper discusses co-design experiences with various stakeholders to explore latent needs of older persons in their daily living using a universal design approach. Through iterative use of creative methods, freehand sketching and physical models, older adults express their needs in a more accurate, tactile format.

Findings reveal that commonality of interest among older persons are important in building rapport among other participants. It also helps designers develop designs related to health care, mobility, dining and leisure activities.

Older adults and co-design

Close up of an older man and woman with their heads together dancing. He is wearing a hat and cravat, and she is wearing a red flower in her hair. They look loving.Older adults want the same designs as anyone else. Too often older people are gathered together under the umbrella of “the elderly”. This term assumes everyone is the same. It’s applied to people as young as 60 or 65 and every age after that. We can debate the terms but in the end, we are talking about people and design.

An article in Design Week challenges assumptions about older people and design. It reports on a study involving older people in design projects. They found older people “want what we want”. The ‘we’ in this context is young designers.

A key point is that people can live independently for longer if things are designed around their needs. In the end, age isn’t relevant. But designing inclusively is. That’s why devices designed specifically for older people are bought but often abandoned.Ā 

The title of the article is, Why age is often the “least relevant thing” when co-designing with the elderly.Ā  It’s an easy read magazine article with good points for designers.Ā 

Maximise inclusion for ageing in place

A row of red brick terraced houses where people will age in place.
An image from the report

What does ‘ageing in place’ actually mean? For some it means staying put in the family home in their later years. For others it means staying in the same community.Ā 

Researchers at the University of Manchester developed a ‘village’ model of support based on those in the US.Ā The residents came together to identify the services that they need and how they could be better managed. Storytelling was an integral part of the data collection. Ideas were generated for supporting ageing in place at a local level.Ā 

Front cover of the report on ageing in place.
Front cover of the report

The report recounts the difficulties recruiting volunteers and participants as well as overcoming distrust of decision-makers. Access to formal and informal meeting places was also an issue.

Recommendations include building social infrastructure and strengthening organisations led by older people.Ā The title of the report is, Community interventions to promote ‘ageing in place‘. This is a large file.Ā 

Co-designing with people living with dementia

A diagnosis of dementia used to mean staying home and being cared for. Those who work in the area of dementia are doing their best to change this view. But is the design community prepared to embrace people living with dementia? Paul Rogers reports in Co-designing with people living with dementia disruptive design interventions to break the cycle of well-formed mindsets. The co-design method has provided ways for people with dementia to continue contributing to society and have fulfilling lives.

The co-design project was to create a new tartan design. Each person with dementia directed the researcher to co-create their digital design one colour at a time.

A tartan from the research paper with orange and green colouring. Co-designing with people with dementia.

The Disrupting Dementia tartan project shows how co-design methods and tools can enable people living with dementia to make a significant contribution to society after diagnosis. Although dementia changes some aspects of a person, it does not affect their sense of self. Projects such as these not only inform designers, they also give a sense of inclusion and belonging to people with dementia.

From the abstract

This paper illustrates methods for co-designing with people living with dementia in developing a mass-produced product. The research was carried out in collaboration with Alzheimer Scotland using a range of disruptive design interventions. The aim was to break the cycle of we-formed opinions, mindsets, and ways-of-doing that remain unchallenged. The research has resulted in co-designed interventions to help change the perception of dementia.

People living with dementia can offer much to UK society after diagnosis. Co-designed activities and interventions help reconnect people recently diagnosed with dementia to help build their self-esteem, identity and dignity. Co-design processes help keep people with dementia connected to their community, thus delaying the need for formal support,

We worked collaboratively with over 130 people with dementia across Scotland in the co-design and development of a new tartan. The paper concludes with recommendations for researchers when co-designing with people living with dementia.

Altering design mindsets

Breaking Well-Formed Opinions and Mindsets by Designing with People Living with Dementia is a similar paper. You will need institutional access for a free read, or access via ResearchGate.

The paper reports on three design interventions using co-design activities with people diagnosed with dementia. The interventions offer innovations for co-designing with this group.

To move or not to move?

We expect to grow old, but because we don’t aspire to grow old, we rarely plan for it. “I’ll worry about it when the time comes” is a usual response. A report from AHURI looks at the housing situation for older Australians and some previous research is confirmed.

Front cover of the AHURI report on older Australians and the housing aspirations gap.

Most respondents felt their current home would suit them as they grow older, but they are not planning ahead. If they are, they lack information on how to go about it, what to look for, and what their options are other than age-segregated housing.

A significant proportion of respondents hadn’t thought about planning ahead for their living arrangements. This is one reason why we need the Livable Housing Design Standard adopted in all states and territories. It is in the 2022 edition of the National Construction Code and there is a handbook for designers. 

Title of the report is, Older Australians and the housing aspirations gap. There’s a full report and an executive summary.

But do all older people want to stay put?

Apartment block with blue windows and balconies with plants and washing drying.

It is often said that older people want to stay put, but this may not be the case for everyone. A study from Berlin, Germany looked at this issue in depth. While some of the findings might be specific to Berlin, the article raises interesting questions.

The researchers found that social class, gender, age and migrant history were not necessarily measures of movement behaviour. The top three reasons that emerged were: to have a smaller apartment, an obstacle-free apartment, and to have to a cheaper apartment. 

The title of the article is, Why Do(nā€™t) People Move When They Get Older? Estimating the Willingness to Relocate in Diverse Ageing Cities. This is an open access article in Urban Planning journal. The results indicate decisions to move are multifaceted. Older adults are not an homogeneous group with the same needs. As with other studies, older people want the same things as younger people.