Karin Slegers

Computer use in older adults: Determinants and the relationship with cognitive change over a 6year episode

Cognitively challenging activities may support the mental abilities of older adults. The use of computers and the Internet provides divergent cognitive challenges to older persons, and in previous studies, positive effects of computer and Internet use on the quality of life have been demonstrated. The present study addresses two research aims regarding predictors of computer use and the relationship between computer use and changes in cognitive abilities over a 6-year period in both younger (24-49years) and older adults (older than 50years). Data were obtained from an ongoing study into cognitive aging: the Maastricht Aging Study, involving 1823 normal aging adults who were followed for 9years. The results showed age-related differences in predictors of computer use: the only predictor in younger participants was level of education, while in older participants computer use was also predicted by age, sex and feelings of loneliness. Protective effects of computer use were found for measures of selective attention and memory, in both older and younger participants. Effect sizes were small, which suggests that promotion of computer activities in older adults to prevent cognitive decline may not be an efficient strategy.

I would DiYSE for it!: a manifesto for do-it-yourself internet-of-things creation

This paper presents a manifesto directed at developers and designers of internet-of-things creation platforms. Currently, most existing creation platforms are tailored to specific types of end-users, mostly people with a substantial background in or affinity with technology. The thirteen items presented in the manifesto however, resulted from several user studies including non-technical users, and highlight aspects that should be taken into account in order to open up internet-of-things creation to a wider audience. To reach out and involve more people in internet-of-things creation, a relation is made to the social phenomenon of do-it-yourself, which provides valuable insights into how society can be encouraged to get involved in creation activities. Most importantly, the manifesto aims at providing a framework for do-it-yourself systems enabling non-technical users to create internet-of-things applications.

Challenges in doing participatory design with people with dementia

This paper critically looks at the role of people with dementia (and their network) when involved in a participatory design (PD) process and the role of designers when involving a person with dementia (and their network). Two participatory projects (ATOM and Dementia Lab) were analyzed and challenges in doing PD together with people with dementia are defined.

Codesign with people living with cognitive or sensory impairments: a case for method stories and uniqueness

Codesign with people living with cognitive or sensory impairments poses challenges for researchers and designers, due to differences in their mutual experiences and due to the fact that many well-established codesign methods and techniques may not be appropriate and need adjustment. This paper describes a search for an appropriate, dedicated methodological approach for involving people living with impairments in codesign projects. Based on both existing literature and on a series of three academic workshops, we aimed to understand how researchers and designers adjust common codesign techniques and to derive general principles from those adjustments. During our search for a dedicated codesign approach, however, we came to change our view, and therefore our aims. The outcomes of the workshops, more specifically the identification of common challenges that researchers and designers experience, showed that such a dedicated approach may not be the best way to advance the field of codesign methods for people living with impairments. Instead, we now advocate a highly individual approach towards adjusting codesign techniques. In addition, we suggest a new tradition of sharing experiences in order for researchers and designers to learn from one another in the form of method stories.

Active collaboration in healthcare design: participatory design to develop a dementia care app

This paper describes a research project aimed at developing a mealtime data registration tool for people with dementia. As to actively involve all stakeholders in this healthcare design project and to generate empathy and involvement, methods from participatory design were used. For each of the three research phases (ethnography, ideation & conceptualization and prototyping) we describe our approach towards stakeholder involvement and active collaboration. We discuss lessons learned in terms of good practices and the issues we struggle with.

Dazed and confused considered normal: an approach to create interactive systems for people with dementia

In Western society, the elderly represent a rapidly growing demographic group. For this group, dementia has become an important cause of dependencies on others and causes difficulties with independent living. Typical symptoms of the dementia syndrome are decreased location awareness and difficulties in situating ones activities in time, thus hindering long term plans and activities. We present our approach in creating an interactive system tailored for the needs of the early phases of the dementia syndrome. Given the increasing literacy with mobile technologies in this group, we propose an approach that exploits mobile technology in combination with the physical and social context to support prolonged independent living. Our system strengthens the involvement of caregivers through the patients social network. We show that applications for people suffering from dementia can be created by explicitly taking into account context in the design process. Context dependencies that are defined in an early stage in the development process are propagated as part of the runtime behavior of the interactive system.

Applying the CHECk tool to participatory design sessions with children

To encourage ethical practices in participatory design with children the CHECk tool was created. This paper reports on an expert review of the CHECk tool and a validating case study. Four main challenges to the CHECk tool are identified: (1) how to inform children on the research and their role herein, (2) distinguishing between project values and designer or researchers personal values, (3) accounting for the dynamic nature and social constructedness of values in design, and (4) the emergence of values in all stakeholders including child design partners. We advocate complementing CHECk with interactive storytelling and show how this narrative can be used to not only inform participation and achieve ethical symmetry, but also to negotiate values with child design partners.

Using correspondence analysis to monitor the persona segmentation process

Persona segmentation is the first phase of the persona method. It can be defined as the process of creating representative groups of similar users. Since the origin of the persona technique, both qualitative and quantitative methods have been used to create persona segments. While the qualitative approach has been criticized because of its lack of accuracy in creating persona segments, application of quantitative methods seems to be suffering from the same problem, due to inconsiderate application of statistical techniques. In this paper, we present Correspondence Analysis, an exploratory data technique, as an alternative quantitative persona segmentation method. We demonstrate that this method is appropriate to create useful persona profiles, and, additionally, it can aid in carefully monitoring the segmentation process.

Multimodal Analysis in Participatory Design with Children: A Primary School Case Study

We describe a multimodal method for the analysis of co-design outcomes in participatory design (PD) with children. The multimodal approach we take allows researchers to treat both verbal (notes, writings) and tangible material out-comes as complementary ways of communicating design ideas. We argue that an integrated approach in which both PD outcomes are compared and contrasted can result in a richer analysis, in which underlying values can be identified more clearly. To illustrate the method, we describe a PD process with primary school children.

CoDesign with people living with cognitive and sensory impairments

This special issue aims to bring together current research on codesign with people living with cognitive or sensory impairments. The idea for this special issue grew from the challenges the guest editors encountered in their own codesign projects involving such end-users. These challenges are at least partly related to the fact that people living with cognitive or sensory impairments may make sense of the world, and may share their experiences in a radically different way than other end-users and codesign researchers and designers themselves. As a result, researchers, designers and codesign participants living with impairments may find it difficult to understand each other, and to communicate. In addition, participants’ impairments may pose challenges on a methodological level. For instance, many cognitive and sensory impairments are related to thought processes and communication skills, including memory, sequencing actions, understanding abstractions and interpreting social cues. These are precisely the processes and skills that many participatory and codesign techniques draw upon. Therefore, such techniques might not be usable at all, or may need to be adjusted for working with people with impairments. In our view, an important prerequisite for codesign is to create a ‘space’ for common understanding and creation. This can be understood as a ‘hybrid space’ where a process of mutual learning and shaping can occur. The concept of such a hybrid space, as defined by Muller (2003), serves as an in-between region for researchers and designers on the one hand and end-users on the other hand. It is an overlap between two different worlds and is not owned by the researcher, the designer or by the end-user. As such, this hybrid space is open to differences and thus may serve as a place for poly-vocal discussion and co-creation: a bridge between theworld of (technology) developers, designers and researchers on the one hand, and the world of end-users on the other.When working with participants living with a cognitive or sensory impairment, the task of creating a hybrid space may require more thought and preparation than for other codesign projects. Therefore, in the call for papers for this special issue, we asked the design research community to report on the methods, techniques and tools they use in codesign in order to create hybrid spaces for designing with persons with cognitive or sensory impairments. More specifically, we asked for papers dealing with methodological issues, such as the customisation of existing codesign techniques to make them suitable for use with participants living with impairments. When adjusting codesign techniques for users living with cognitive or sensory impairments, a critical issue seems to be that different adjustments have to be devised for specific user groups. Unfortunately, the reasoning that informed the adjustments that have been reported until now has not always been clearly described. As a result, it is difficult for researchers and designers to generalise the lessons learned from previous adjustments to future research. This special issue examines whether it is possible to extract general guidelines for codesigning with end-users living with cognitive or sensory impairments. Do researchers and designers who do codesign with people living with cognitive or sensory impairments need a different set of guidelines than designers who work with other types of users?