Including stakeholders in the design of home care systems: Identification and categorisation of complex user requirements

Home Care Systems have not been taken up in people’s homes as eagerly as might have first been anticipated. Yet with an increasing ageing population and an increased drive to support people living independently in their own homes, there is a continuing need for well designed, acceptable Home Care Systems. The complexity of the requirements of both individuals and the network of care surrounding people in their homes makes providing home care solutions a difficult task. In particular, what is known about, and expected of Home Care Systems is still unclear and can often differ between the various stakeholders involved. This paper is part of a project on Mobilising Advanced Technologies for Care at Home and presents the motivations for including stakeholders in both the design and ongoing configuration of homecare systems

Addressing stakeholder conflict in home care systems

Ubiquitous and mobile computing technologies can provide novel and powerful support for home-based management or improvement of the well being of the ageing population living with care conditions in their own homes. However, such home care systems are not easy to design. In particular, such system are subject to potential problems arising from competing demands of different interacting stakeholders, resulting in potential failure or at least serious degradation of system effectiveness or user satisfaction. We present a conceptual framework for the representation of such stakeholder conflict in home care systems, identifying types of stakeholder, types and sources of potential conflict, and some initial ideas about how design methods and appropriately constructed system infrastructure might help with the identification, negotiation and resolution of such conflict