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.

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. Author Keywords People with dementia; participatory design ACM Classification Keywords H.5.2 User Interfaces INVOLVING PEOPLE WITH DEMENTIA IN RESEARCH AND DESIGN PROCESSESDementia is an umbrella term used to describe a variety of psychiatric and cognitive symptoms. Personality changes, depression, hallucinations and delusions are the most known psychiatric symptoms. On a cognitive level people with dementia almost always suffer from a deterioration of memory (such as amnesia), difficulties in language (aphasia), the inability to perform purposeful movements (apraxia) and orientation in time and place (agnosia) (APA, 2000). Additional behavioral and cognitive problems (irritation/frustration, short attention span, an inability to learn new routines,…) can occur. As a large group of people with dementia belong to the group of older persons, physical ailments like impaired eyesight, hearing or physical coordination are likely to appear (Lobo et al., 1999). A wide variety of types of dementia exists and the way it affects daily life will be different for each person. Involvement in research and designTo involve people with dementia in a research and design process is not an easy thing. In the domain of design of IT applications, Span et al. (2013) found that only 2 out of 26 research projects involved the person with dementia not as an object of study or informant, but as a partner (or co-designer) in the design and research process. To see the person with dementia as a mere object of study or to only rely on proxies stems from the vision on the person with dementia as the 'uncollected corpse' (Miller, 1990) or as someone who no longer possesses a sense of self. Kitwood (1997), however, states that a person with dementia must be recognized as a person with thoughts, emotions, wishes and thus, a person who should actively be included in research. Participatory design with people with dementiaTo actively include people with dementia in research and design can be done by using participatory design methods. Although we see good examples of working in a participatory manner with people with dementia (Holbø, et al., 2013;Lindsay, Brittain, et al., 2012;Mayer & Zach, 2013;Meiland et al., 2012), the question we are trying to answer in this paper, is what the challenges experienced in doing PD with people with dementia in two projects were. We will look at the role of the participants (person with dementia, designer,…), the analysis and the scalability of the research results and the impact of the PD process on the participants. CHALLENGES OF DOING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN WITH PEOPLE WITH DEMENTIAWe define 7 challenges in doing PD with people with dementia coming from our ...

Abstract. 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.The aim of this paper is to present a number of guidelines which can be used as a starting point to set up participatory design projects with persons with dementia. This overarching set of guidelines provides for practical advice focusing on the role of the moderator, the preparation of a participatory session, the choice and adaptation of the method, the tools used, the role of each participant and the subsequent analysis. The basis for these guidelines stems from similar participatory projects with senior participants, persons with dementia and participants with aphasia or amnesia, two symptoms frequently co-occurring with dementia. All guidelines were evaluated and refined during four sessions with persons with dementia and a trusted family member. These participatory design sessions occurred in the course of the AToM project, a research and design project that tries to design an intelligent network of objects and people to ameliorate the life of persons with dementia.Keywords: participatory design 1 , persons with dementia, method, guidelines 1 We choose to use the term participatory design and not collective design or the Scandinavian tradition, being the predecessors of participatory design [4]. Neither did we use the term participative design which is set more in a UK tradition of participation and is thus less focused on co-creation [5].