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Designing with and for Older People

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Design of Assistive Technology for Ageing Populations

Part of the book series: Intelligent Systems Reference Library ((ISRL,volume 167))

Abstract

 Assistive technology (AT) can play a key role in helping older people live more independent and fulfilling lives for longer. However, several studies suggest that the current offerings of the AT market cater only to ‘functional’ needs, and do not fit within the complex realities of people’s lives, their personal preferences or the potential for user’s needs to change over time. As such, AT’s have a high rate of abandonment, arguably leading to increased risks to potential user’s health and safety. In other areas of healthcare, the involvement of patients or ‘users’ to ‘co-design’ products or services is being increasingly recognised as in important route to context-sensitive, person-centred and sustainable health innovation. This chapter will outline ways in which older adults can be involved in a ‘co-design’ process, with the belief that this involvement may address some of the issues with current AT. The authors propose 5 key principles of effective co-design and illustrate them with a case study from their practice. This is followed by a set of practical tips, as well as a discussion on how ‘doing’ and ‘making’ can play a key role in helping diverse stakeholder groups work together meaningfully. Finally, by contrasting the trends of the AT market with the development of commercial technology over the last 30 years, the authors also posit that a cross-generational co-design approach may be necessary in order to anticipate (or be responsive to) the emergent needs of future users of AT. It is hoped that the guidance and examples given here are merely the start of this conversation, and that practitioners from healthcare, design, academia and industry see the value of exploring these ideas further in their own contexts and communities.

“I remember as a child we used to have one family computer on a special table in our lounge and we used it for specific tasks, deliberately having to disconnect the phone line to plug the computer into the internet, waiting for it to make a dialup connection and then having to be so patient with it to browse the web…these were mini events that sometimes brought the whole family together or, at the very least, required substantial, dedicated effort and time from (usually) my father.”

Memory of Rebecca Partridge

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For the purposes of this chapter, we will use Sanders and Stappers’ definition of ‘co-design’ as referring to ‘the creativity of designers and people not trained in design working together in the design development process’ [7].

  2. 2.

    Terms such as co-design, co-production, co-creation, and so on, have emerged from the field of Participatory Design which has its roots in the Scandinavian Workplace Democracy Movement of the 1970s—see Simonsen and Robertson [8] for a detailed history.

  3. 3.

    Here the term is used to denote, roughly, the general adult population over the age of 55. It does not refer to adults with any specific health condition, although some researchers provide excellent guidance on involving older adults with dementia—see Branco et al. [10].

  4. 4.

    However, some key examples of co-designing with older adults could be found in the contexts of hospital services and environments (see Wolstenholme et al. [12]; Macdonald et al. [13].

  5. 5.

    Whilst there are existing frameworks dedicated to exploring ‘participation’ (for example, [28–30]), participation for us is about an individual’s ability to impart and share their knowledge.

  6. 6.

    A discussion of this is available from Langley et al. [31].

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lab4Living, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK

    Joe Langley, Gemma Wheeler, Rebecca Partridge, Remi Bec & Dan Wolstenholme

  2. NIHR CLAHRC YH, Sheffield, UK

    Joe Langley, Remi Bec & Dan Wolstenholme

  3. NIHR Devices for Dignity MIC, Sheffield, UK

    Joe Langley & Lise Sproson

Authors
  1. Joe Langley
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  2. Gemma Wheeler
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  3. Rebecca Partridge
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  4. Remi Bec
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  5. Dan Wolstenholme
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  6. Lise Sproson
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joe Langley .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Coventry University, Coventry, UK

    Andree Woodcock

  2. Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Coventry University, Coventry, UK

    Louise Moody

  3. School of Art and Design, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA

    Deana McDonagh

  4. Elizabeth Grove Surgery, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Ajita Jain

  5. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, Centre for Artificial Intelligence, University of Technology, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Lakhmi C. Jain

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Langley, J., Wheeler, G., Partridge, R., Bec, R., Wolstenholme, D., Sproson, L. (2020). Designing with and for Older People. In: Woodcock, A., Moody, L., McDonagh, D., Jain, A., Jain, L. (eds) Design of Assistive Technology for Ageing Populations. Intelligent Systems Reference Library, vol 167. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26292-1_1

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