Niels Hendriks

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.

Designing with Dementia: Guidelines for Participatory Design together with Persons with Dementia

Involving all stakeholders in the design process is often seen as a necessity from both a pragmatic and a moral point of view [1]. This is always a challenging task for designers and stakeholders and therefore many participatory design methods have been developed to facilitate such a design process. The traditional participatory design methods, however, are not fully appropriate to incorporate persons with dementia [2], [3]. They create issues as they assume that the participants are cognitively able; can make use of visual and hands-on techniques; or require a high level of abstraction ability of the person with dementia.

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.

Participatory design with people living with cognitive or sensory impairments

This workshop aims to exchange experiences with participatory design techniques that were designed for, or adapted to, people with impairments. More specifically, the first aim is to identify commonalities and differences in current practices. Second, based on the results of two previous workshops and on the experiences of the participants of this workshop, general guidelines and recommendations will be formulated for involving users with impairments affecting cognitive and sensory abilities in the design process.

Participatory design for users with impairments affecting cognitive functions and communication skills

Involving people with impairments in the design process is very challenging, especially when impairments affect cognitive functions or communication. People with such impairments may have substantial problems with thought processes and communication, including understanding abstractions, sequencing thoughts and actions, understanding symbols, and interpreting social cues. Many participatory design techniques are based on these processes and are therefore not usable, or need to be adjusted for people with impairments. This workshop aims to exchange experiences with participatory design techniques that were designed for, or adapted to people with impairments. Since many of these techniques are highly focused on specific target groups, a further aim is to extract general principles and to generate guidelines for involving users with impairments in the design process.

Empowering people with impairments: how participatory methods can inform the design of empowering artifacts

Participatory Design has developed methods that empower people with impairments to actively take part in the design process. Many designed artifacts for this target group likewise aim to empower their users in daily life. In this workshop, we share and relate best practices of both empowering methods and empowering designs. Participants are therefore invited to bring along cases of designing for- and with people with sensory-, cognitive- or social impairments. Our workshop consists of three parts: (1) Foregrounding empowering elements in PD methods using method stories, containing the backstory of a method put into practice; (2) Reflecting on technological artifacts, exploring the empowering qualities of person-artifact-context interaction; (3) constructing a critical synopsis of the various relationships between empowering products and - methods.

Scripting: an exploration of designing for participation over time with communities

Abstract Designing participation over time is a challenge that is regularly discussed in the fields of Participatory Design (PD) and Codesign. This paper describes two living labs-cases concerned with designing IT during long-term engagements with communities. Both labs aim to enable participatory exchanges after the designer leaves and are thus confronted with challenges that transcend the time of the traditional design ‘project’. We addressed these challenges via defining the IT design process as scripting, which is a process that better articulates the participants’ different voices and timelines. In this process three types of scripts are made, supported by the facilitator role: personal scripts as portrayals of individuals’ views on issues in the community and timelines to address these; community scripts aspiring to combine personal scripts into pluralistic views on the community and scripts for action as ways to rehearse how the community might unfold after the designer leaves. Key to this approach is that diverse people’s views and timelines play a role in co-constructing IT platforms that support participation in the community over time. By creating IT tools that are enabled by and support scripting, designing for participation over time becomes a pluralistic endeavour.

Counterfactual scripting: challenging the temporality of participation

Abstract This paper discusses counterfactual scripting to critically inquire and give form to Participatory Design (PD) processes in an age of ubiquitous participation. In its often superficial application in various societal domains, the processes and instruments for participation are often cut loose from their political context. The stories of what has happened in a PD process are told through a clear storyline that develops logically via different design moves towards a well-defined plot; leaving out any alternative narratives. Inspired by counterfactual history, we reject this teleological perspective and explore counterfactual scripting as a way to give renewed attention to the political context in PD. We do this by giving form to the design process as a pluralistic process that not only focuses on the future, but creates alternatives for the past to speculate about the future. We evaluate counterfactual thinking in a participatory architecture and urban planning process.

Counterfactual scripting: acknowledging the past as a resource for PD

This paper discusses counterfactual scripting as a framework to critically inquire and give form to design decisions in Participatory Design (PD) processes. The stories of what has happened in a design process are often told in a clear storyline that develops logically via different design moves towards a well-defined plot. Counterfactual scripting is a rejection of this teleological perspective. Inspired by counterfactual history, counterfactual scripting gives form to the PD process via the creation of plausible alternatives for the past and speculations about the future. In this way, the (materialised) counterfactual script facilitates in the perception of a more pluralistic view of past and future. In this paper we form the basis for a framework of counterfactual scripting by connecting theory on decision-making in PD with theory on counterfactual thinking in history and design. This framework is applied and evaluated in a case study in participatory spatial planning.