Co-designing smart home technology with people with dementia or Parkinson's disease

Involving users is crucial to designing technology successfully, especially for vulnerable users in health and social care, yet detailed descriptions and critical reflections on the co-design process, techniques and methods are rare. This paper introduces the PERCEPT (PERrsona-CEntred Participatory Technology) approach for the co-design process and we analyse and discuss the lessons learned for each step in this process. We applied PERCEPT in a project to develop a smart home toolset that will allow a person living with early stage dementia or Parkinson's to plan, monitor and self-manage his or her life and well-being more effectively. We present a set of personas which were co-created with people and applied throughout the project in the co-design process. The approach presented in this paper will enable researchers and designers to better engage with target user groups in co-design and point to considerations to be made at each step for vulnerable users

Using a Requirements Modelling Language to Co-Design Intelligent Support for People Living with Dementia

Context and motivation: this research developed a new AI application to support people with dementia to maintain quality of life. Problem: the research explored methods for co-designing models of goals that users of an AI application will seek to achieve. Principal result: An effective co-design method for enabling domain experts to externalize and validate expertise about dementia care. Contribution: A co-design goal modelling method effective with dementia care workers, but still untested with experts in other domains

How was it for you? Experiences of participatory design in the UK health service

Improving co-design methods implies that we need to understand those methods, paying attention to not only the effect of method choices on design outcomes, but also how methods affect the people involved in co-design. In this article, we explore participants' experiences from a year-long participatory health service design project to develop ‘Better Outpatient Services for Older People’. The project followed a defined method called experience-based design (EBD), which represented the state of the art in participatory service design within the UK National Health Service. A sample of participants in the project took part in semi-structured interviews reflecting on their involvement in and their feelings about the project. Our findings suggest that the EBD method that we employed was successful in establishing positive working relationships among the different groups of stakeholders (staff, patients, carers, advocates and design researchers), although conflicts remained throughout the project. Participants' experiences highlighted issues of wider relevance in such participatory design: cost versus benefit, sense of project momentum, locus of control, and assumptions about how change takes place in a complex environment. We propose tactics for dealing with these issues that inform the future development of techniques in user-centred healthcare design

Adapting participatory and agile software methods to participatory rural development

This paper presents observations from a project that combines participatory rural development methods with participatory design techniques to support a farmers’ co-operative in Madhya Pradesh, India</p

Co-design of forward-control and force-feedback methods for teleoperation of an unmanned aerial vehicle

The core hypothesis of this ongoing research project is that co-designing haptic-feedback and forward-control methods for shared-control teleoperation will enable the operator to more readily understand the shared-control algorithm, better enabling him or her to work collaboratively with the shared-control technology.} This paper presents a novel method that can be used to co-design forward control and force feedback in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) teleoperation. In our method, a potential field is developed to quickly calculate the UAV's risk of collision online. We also create a simple proxy to represent the operator's confidence, using the swiftness with which the operator sends commands the to UAV. We use these two factors to generate both a scale factor for a position-control scheme and the magnitude of the force feedback to the operator. Currently, this methodology is being implemented and refined in a 2D-simulated environment. In the future, we will evaluate our methods with user study experiments using a real UAV in a 3D environment.Accepted manuscrip

Inspiring service innovation through co-design in public sector healthcare

How can we inspire service innovation through the co-design of public sector healthcare delivery particularly when facing a large and complex challenge? The design and development of a new prototype food service to address malnutrition in older adult hospital patients is used as a case study. It describes how methods used predominantly by designers have been adapted to empower, train, inspire, facilitate and guide not only the multi-disciplinary research team - including food scientists, nutritionists, medical sociologists, ergonomists, and technologists - but also service users and providers. The co-design process is based on the idea that much innovation comes from creating a blend of ideas from multiple sources and that the design of the research can influence the degree of innovation. This paper describes the approach and process that has provided the research team with valuable findings, insights and ideas crucial to successful service redesign and innovation and which is resulting in a new food service prototype

Understanding Older Vehicle Users: An Interpretative Approach

Future adaptations in vehicle design should be linked in some parts to the age-related changes often faced by the older users. The aim of this research is to investigate the multiple age-related changes of Chinese older vehicle users in order to assist designers to better understand current and future older users’ needs. Although qualitative interpretative approaches have rarely been applied in the field of traffic gerontology research, they are widely used in current design research to explore persons’ lived experiences, behaviours and emotions. Therefore, this study employed qualitative research methods consisting of observation, interview, travel logbook and co-discovery to explore older vehicle users’ travel needs. The interpretative analysis confirmed that multiple methods such as interview, travel logbook, and co-discovery are useful to gain a holistic understanding of older drivers’ travel needs. However, the one journey driving observation cannot provide valuable categories to explore older users’ multiple travel needs due to daily living context absence in the one trip experiment. It is clear that the useful methods for determining research for older users will depend on the product. The findings demonstrate that Chinese future older generations are more concerned about their age-related differences from social and cultural perspective rather than physiological perspective. Social and cultural context play important role to shape older vehicle users’ future travel needs. From design a point of view, understanding the social activity and cultural context surrounds older vehicle users should make it possible to predict older drivers’ needs related to vehicle property. Keywords: Older Vehicle Users; Cultural Context; Social Context; Vehicle Design; Qualitative Research</p

A Case Study of Applied Co-Design in 3D Virtual Space for Facilitating Bicycle Use on Light Rail Systems

Cycling is highly recommended by experts concerned with environmental and public health. Cycling does not produce CO2 emissions, can be economical, and can improve physical fitness. However, the barriers to cycling remain significant to many. Combined with a light rail system the bicycle offers a compelling alternative to automobiles; yet, bicycles are denied access on certain rail systems because they can take too much space away from pedestrians who share the light rail interior. To help solve this problem, Co-Design in 3D virtual space is proposed as an effective means of creating an innovative design solution. The digital questionnaires and virtual 3D modeling research/design method used in this study gives the participant the ability to offer insights and express ideas through digital means and in 3D virtual space. This method, Co-Design in Virtual Space (CoDeViS), was developed by the author. CoDeViS methods are an outgrowth of physical co-design methods such as 2D collages and 3D Velcro modeling, developed by those featured in The International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts. Physical 3D methods have been widely accepted in the new product development industry as effective ways to involve people outside a design team in the research and design process. CoDeViS methods offer promise to those seeking to make the principles of co-design available to larger groups of people in discrete locations around the world at lower cost. Historical developments, current technology, and the abilities of everyday people make CoDeViS possible.</p