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Empathy, participatory design and people with dementia

Published: 05 May 2012 Publication History

Abstract

We describe the development, application and evaluation of a design method tailored for working with people with mild to moderate dementia. Our experiences with the approach highlighted areas where designers and participants held radically different views. The tenet of our approach was that to overcome these differences we needed to create an empathic relationship between participants and designers. To achieve this we modified participatory design techniques to foster respectful engagement with participants in the development of a digital aid to facilitate "safe walking". The process begins with broad qualitative scoping and design work then moves to developing personally tailored, individual designs to further exploration of the experiential elements of the domain while reducing the need for the participants to engage in abstract thought. Reflection highlights a number of important areas that demand consideration when undertaking research in this area and, more generally, when performing design work with people with dementia.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI '12: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    May 2012
    3276 pages
    ISBN:9781450310154
    DOI:10.1145/2207676
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 05 May 2012

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    Author Tags

    1. dementia
    2. empathy
    3. experience
    4. participatory design

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    Cited By

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    • (2024)Assistive technologies designed to support executive function impairments while promoting independence: A scoping reviewJournal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering10.1177/2055668324126865811Online publication date: 1-Aug-2024
    • (2024)"I Wish You Could Make the Camera Stand Still": Envisioning Media Accessibility Interventions with People with AphasiaProceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3663548.3675598(1-17)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
    • (2024)Beyond empathy: Role-Taking as a structural approach to participatory designProceedings of the 3rd Empathy-Centric Design Workshop: Scrutinizing Empathy Beyond the Individual10.1145/3661790.3661800(46-51)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)On the Design Risks of Empathy FatigueProceedings of the 3rd Empathy-Centric Design Workshop: Scrutinizing Empathy Beyond the Individual10.1145/3661790.3661798(34-39)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)Prototyping and Evaluation of Emotionally Resonant Vibrotactile Comfort Objects as a Calming Social Anxiety InterventionACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/364861531:4(1-48)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2024
    • (2024)Managing Finances for Persons Living with Dementia: Current Practices and Challenges for Care PartnersExtended Abstracts of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3650809(1-7)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)EmpathiCH: Scrutinizing Empathy-Centric Design Beyond the IndividualExtended Abstracts of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3636297(1-7)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)HCI Research in Sensitive Settings: Learning Researcher Reflexivity, Ethical Conduct and Empathy in Participatory Design ApproachesExtended Abstracts of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3636280(1-4)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)Designing Diverse Pathways for ParticipationProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642240(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)Co-Designing QuickPic: Automated Topic-Specific Communication Boards from Photographs for AAC-Based Language InstructionProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642080(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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