Alina Huldtgren

A value sensitive action-reflection model: evolving a co-design space with stakeholder and designer prompts

We introduce a design method for evolving a co-design space to support stakeholders untrained in design. Specifically, the purpose of the method is to expand and shape a co-design space so that stakeholders, acting as designers, focus not only on the form and function of a tool being envisioned but also on the social context of its use and values that lie with individuals, groups, and societies. The method introduces value sensitive stakeholder prompts and designer prompts into a co-design process, creating a particular kind of reflection-on-action cycle. The prompts provide a means for bringing empirical data on values and theoretical perspective into the co-design process. We present the method in terms of a general model, the Value Sensitive Action-Reflection Model; place the model within discourse on co-design spaces; and illustrate the model with a discussion of its application in a lo-fi prototyping activity around safety for homeless young people. We conclude with reflections on the model and method.

Design for Agency, Adaptivity and Reciprocity: Reimagining AAL and Telecare Agendas

It goes without saying that the developed world is facing significant challenges in dealing with the increasing demands of an ageing population, especially around health and care. It is also easy to understand why technology is seen as a key enabler for meeting this challenge. Application areas such as Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) and telecare are receiving increasing governmental, industry and research attention, taking advantage of maturing and increasingly ubiquitous wireless, mobile and sensor-based technologies. However, to date, many of these advances have been largely driven by technology-utopian visions without real understanding for how such technologies come to be situated in everyday life and healthcare practice and what their potential is for enhancing new ways of living into older age. Further, there is limited evidence of their effectiveness to date, and the problems with adoption from the patients’ perspectives suggest it is timely to reflect on these experiences and reimagine new ways of approaching AAL/telecare from a broader socio-technical perspective. To this end, we propose AAL/telecare as modular infrastructures for the home that can be adapted and repurposed, starting with personal ‘quality of life’ and social needs (supporting peer care) and progressing to monitoring, physical and medical needs (supporting formal care) as relevant for a person and as needs evolve. This extends the adoption path to supporting healthy ageing, taking notions of agency, adaptivity and social reciprocity as core principles. We illustrate this with some examples and identify some of the associated technical and methodological challenges.

A SmartTV Platform for Wellbeing, Care and Social Support for Elderly at Home

This paper presents Care@Home, a smartTV platform integrating assistive living services for elderly in their homes. The SmartTV is acting as a user-centered ‘hub’ providing communication that connects the elderly to their formal care network, family, friends, communities, and provides services including household help, healthcare, exercise programmes and entertainment. The paper highlights Care@Home as a low-cost, personalized and open platform that is flexible and easy-to-use. We describe the human-centered design and first results from user studies.

Towards Community-Based Co-creation

Current AAL solutions are often rejected by senior end-users, who do not perceive their benefits or themselves as the target group. This is due to the prevailing technology-driven design process that does not account for human needs. To shift the focus from the technology to the human, involvement of stakeholders in the design process is crucial. In this paper we outline some issues with involvement and continuous engagement of seniors and propose the concept of community-based co-creation as a way forward. Key is the facilitation of long-term collaboration of a community comprised of stakeholders including among others seniors, caregivers and researchers. Their neighborhoods serve as a natural context for designing and implementing their own solutions. We raise several points for consideration and first steps to be discussed.

An Introduction to the Pocket Negotiator: A General Purpose Negotiation Support System

The Pocket Negotiator (PN) is a negotiation support system developed at TU Delft as a tool for supporting people in bilateral negotiations over multi-issue negotiation problems in arbitrary domains. Users are supported in setting their preferences, estimating those of their opponent, during the bidding phase and sealing the deal. We describe the overall architecture, the essentials of the underlying techniques, the form that support takes during the negotiation phases, and we share evidence of the effectiveness of the Pocket Negotiator.