“These things take time” Unhurried explorations and independent prototypes In participatory design with older adults
Year: 2019
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The motivation for this thesis is twofold: to explore if and how older adults can participate in design of digital technology, and utilize my interest in designing and making digital and physical technologies. These interests motivated my two research questions: 1. How can one facilitate older adults’ participation in the design of digital technology? 2. In what way can independent prototypes play a role in supporting older adults’ participation in the design of digital technology? In order to answer these research questions, I have carried out a Participatory Design (PD) process with older adults. This is, therefore, an empirical thesis. I have spent 160 hours in the field with a total of 34 participants in 81 activities over the course of 11 months. I have also spent countless hours on programming, soldering, and giving physical form to props, prototypes, and independent prototypes that participants have used in extended periods. My PD process was guided by the three general PD principles: to make sure that the participants have a say, emphasize mutual learning so that they get the design decision competence needed to make design decisions, and engage them in co-construction so that they experience the malleability and rigidity of the technology themselves. Based on my experiences, I propose three new principles, particularly for achieving genuine participation by older adults: 1. Prioritize the decisions made by the participants. This includes decisions in defining choices at all levels of detail and importance. 2. Give the participants concrete personal experiences with technology relevant to the design process as well as with the designs created in their process. 3. Organize the process with care for how the participants prefer working, including their tempo and their pace of learning. In my analysis of the PD process, I emphasize four themes: respect, experience, decisions, and things take time, that are elaborated in the thesis. I operationalize the notion of genuine participation by arguing that the participants need to have design decision competence. They need to be able to: A) See design possibilities in a situation and suggest their own design ideas. B) Make informed decisions on which design move to make. C) Take part in concretizing and co-construction of choices, evaluate different options. D) Evaluate a design move, understand the consequence of a choice. Providing experience with independent prototypes is crucial for developing design decision competence. I define an independent prototype as a prototype that enables exploration by the users over time in their preferred context and on their own terms without the researcher/designer by their side, but still has a form, which is unfinished and signals space for further design choices. In the thesis, I have demonstrated that independent prototypes play a crucial role in experiencing technology, and that experience is an effective way to learn about technology and design for non-designers. Independent prototypes enable the participants to learn in their own home and develop their own opinions. The wording of the thesis title “unhurried explorations” refers to this. My thesis demonstrates that it is possible for older adults to participate in design of digital technology even for a seemingly closed and finished product like the mobile phone. The thesis has shown that older adults can imagine and evaluate alternative phone technologies and that designers (i.e., I) can be challenged to open up seemingly finished technologies and rethink their design.
Author: Harald Maartmann-Moe
Language: English
Subfield: Geriatrics and Gerontology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3015007823