Fourteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

Co-design and participatory design are practices through which designers and researchers attempt to co-operate with or learn from potential users of products or services which they are researching or developing (Steen 2011, p.48). This approach is regarded as key in the design of health-related technologies where non-acceptance of products is high (Sligo et al. 2017, Standing et al. 2018,). Whilst the value of co-design is accepted, to date few studies articulate how this might be achieved. This paper describes two case studies which detail innovative but polarising approaches to the development of these technologies. One set within the Horizon 2020 project NESTORE, a digital platform and tangible interface which seeks to promote wellbeing through meaningful health promoting activities. Second is an Innovate UK project concerned with the development of a wearable medical device in collaboration with a leading Medtec company. The research drew on an existing body of work by the authors ‘thinking through things’, utilising objects and artefacts as methods to stimulate and scaffold thinking, offering valuable vehicles through which the complexities of lives can be understood. The research programme engaged AGE platform Europe and over 100 end-users across four countries to build understanding of requirements of the technology but which then also co-developed methods to translate these between sectors (academic and commercial), between countries and between disciplines (health, design, technology). The paper concludes with a set of principles in relation to co-design and their transferability when developing health technologies based on the new insights achieved through this research.