For a consortium of public sector organisations in The Netherlands STBY is working on a user-driven innovation proces aiming to develop new remote services that support older people to live independently at home. Moving to a retirement home is not something most older people are looking forward to. Luckily nowadays, it is possible to get a lot of care and support at home. Remote services have a potential to offer people a maximum of flexibility and independence. In every stage of this project people from the target group, older people and their carers, have been involved in order make sure the team works with their perspective firmly in mind.

The consortium of client organisations include two primary care providers (Zuidzorg and PlusExtra), a local council (Gemeente Geldrop-Mierlo) and a building society. The agencies commisioned to facilitate the public engagement and concept development proces are STBY and Waag Society. The project has been ongoing since July 2009. First an early stage exploration, which was later followed by a service concept development, service blueprinting, prototype building and validation by the target group.

One of the starting points for the project was the observation that when older people become care dependent they often find it hard to get used to the range of support services available but new to them. Specifically remote services have a high entry barrier at this stage. The aim of this project is to develop new services that invite older people to familiarise themselves with remote support services before they become care dependent. The objective of the first step in the project was to discover what type of services people would welcome into their lives at this stage. Later in the project the ideas and prototypes of new services were discussed and validated with older people and their carers in a series of interviews and co-creation sessions.

From the point of view of the target group the main benefit of these new services would be that they offer an opportunity to connect more easily to organisations and other people from the comfort of their homes. The primary target group is people aged 75+ who live independently at home. They are still reasonably healthy, but less mobile than before. The secundary target group are the family, neighbours and close friends of these older people, who regularly help out with little tasks and generally keep an eye out for how things are going. The remote services aim to facilitate the day to day communications between these people, as well as enabling contact with care organisations.

From the feedback elicited from the target group seems to be clear that they expect to benefit from a service that will allow them to stay socially active and connected while they are getting less mobile. They can continue their participation in social networks and events, and while doing so familiarise themselves with the remote services that may one day become important for their contact with care organisations.

For the organisations in the client consortium the biggest change is that for these new services they no longer position themselves as the organisations that ‘solve peoples problems’. With WSG they now also position themselves as organisations that facilitate people to solve their own problems, while they still can. This is a new and appropriate way of addressing a target group that does not consider themselves as people who need help or care yet. They would otherwise be averse of any service offering in this context, which is currently the main barrier for the uptake of remote care services.

Another major achievement for the organisations in the client consortium is the learning process about user-driven innovation and co-creation. This way of working was fairly new to them. They were easger to learn more about this, as they genuinly want their organisation to be more customer oriented, but they had little experience with the appropriate methods for this. STBY and Waag Society, as experts in this field, have taken care to involve the client team in every step of the process. A full documentation of the the process is currently being produced in a booklet for internal use. The organisations aim to do more of these kind of projects in the future.

The co-creation process in this project involved the target group at every stage. The need assessment, concept development and prototyping were all validated with older people and their carers. These validations acted as key performance indicators during the design process. They focused on two aspects. First, does the target group understand the (intermediate) result? And second, how do they perceive and describe the value of the result, if any?

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For the University of Amsterdam STBY facilitated a series of workshops with students, lecturers and system operators to inform the iterative development of its new Electronic Learning System (ELO).

The Information Centre of the university, who are developing the ELO based on Blackboard software, wanted to have in-depth conversations with their wide range user groups throughout the development process of the new ELO. STBY prepared a series of 3 workshops were the participants explored and discussed the various options and iterative prototypes for the new ELO.

To keep everyone active and focused, the programmes for the sessions were based on a fast paced cycle of group assignments, plenary discussions and individual feedback. The participants had access to the ELO in progress, so they could follow the development in various stages.

Over the course of 6 months 3 workshops took place. The timing of the workshops also helped the development team to stay on their toes and make sure they had something new to show the participants for every session. Both sides were eager to reflect on the progress and discuss further improvements.

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Workshop Woonservice Gemeente Geldrop-Mierlo

For a consortium of organisations in the South of the Netherlands (primary health care, housing associations and local government) STBY and Waag Society conducted a study to identify the needs among older people for new services supporting independent living at home.

During an intense week of house visits we met with both older people living in single households, and some of their close friends or relatives who offer support if needed. The conversations about potential needs for more formal support by third parties were guided and facilitated by visual probes we prepared with the design team of Waag Society.

We used both a Social Map and a Home Environment Map to elicit information about participants’ social support network and their favourite locations and objects in their home environment. Any future support services will need to blend in successfully with these existing conditions, otherwise they are not very likely to succeed. And since the social lives and households of the older people and their helpers are quite different, the future services may need to have different appearances/interfaces on both ends.

The maps, together with various photographs and of course our consolidated research notes, were used as input for a workshop with the client team to discuss the insights from the research and to identify the opportunities for new support services. During this workshop an extended client team from several departments took part. For the home visits a core team of two people took turns in being present to observe and learn from the participants first hand.

To enable the client team to communicate the results from the study to other people in their organisations, a small book was made. This book explains and illustrates the process and the results of the study. Together with Waag Society we are currently preparing a workshop to develop concepts, inspired by the home-visits and in response to the opportunities we uncovered. Co-creation wil be our main approach in a second workshop where we will put concepts to older people and their supporters, and ask them to elaborate and give detail. Finally, the most promising concepts will be developed into prototypes as a last step before implementation.

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In a two day training programme we presented our reflections on examples of community involvement methods we have used in a range of  projects. We specifically discussed the benefits of methods such as co-creation and design documentaries. We then explored these methods further together with the participants, in relation to a case study project one of them is currently working on. They had brought materials such as photos to illustrate the context of this project. The main issue for deliberation was how these methods could be used to effectively improve the social cohesion in the local area. As a result of the training programme we developed two potential project activities for this specific case-study.

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Overall, looking back on the conference today, my personal take away message is that the inclusive design community seems to be moving to a new and exciting stage. We now know what inclusive design is, we know how to do it, and we know how to explain to others how to do it, but we also realise that simply following ‘the maximum inclusivity route’ does not necessarily lead to the most interesting design. We certainly don’t want ‘bland design for all’, we want ‘great design for all’. On the one hand this design needs to offer everyone the respect and dignity they deserve, and on the other hand it needs to stimulate and challenge people to actively engage and explore the product, service or environment they are interacting with. Only then design will lead to experiences that really enrich our daily lifes.

The discussions on this topic during the conference reminded me of a concept I once picked up from  Stuart Hall, one of my heroes from the field of Cultural Studies. He made a plea for ‘risky stories’ in relation to culture and society, rather than ’safe stories’. Risky stories  invite us to engage with and reflect on the complexities of daily life. They are far more interesting and challenging than safe stories. Risky stories don’t ignore the contradiction and tensions in daily life, they are engrained in it.  Maybe this is a concept that would be useful in the context of inclusive design as well? I think I would certainly prefer ‘risky inclusive design’ to ’safe inclusive design’ any day.

Some of my personal highlights from the conference:

The keynote by Amar Latif, who kicked off day 2 of the conference, was very inspiring, refreshing and witty.  He is a remarkably vibrant, young and innovative entrepreneur, with a sharp vision and a deep personal understanding of inclusivity (being visually impaired himelf). Amar certainly seems to accept risks as part of normal daily life. He is all for inclusive design and the underlying quest for independence, dignity and respect, but he stressed that life’s solutions need to be practical and colourful too. He has no patience for people who see inequality as a big conspiracy, he rather addresses the ignorance and/or indifference that supports this inequality. In this respect Amar seems to be quite open for risky stories rather than safe ones.

One of the project-based presentations that stood out for me was given by Liesbeth Huybrechts and Sanne Jansen from the Media & Design Academie in Genk Belgium. They reported on an experience design project around the theme of ‘carefree living in elderly care’. They worked with students, residents of a local elderly home and also a theather group. The theather group immersed themselves for a few days in the daily life in the home, and then blended in during a lengthy visit by the students. Some actors performed roles as residents, others as carers and staff. The students did not know who of the people they interacted with were ‘real’ and who were acting. Based on this experience the students worked on design proposals that were later presented back to the residents in an in-house exhibition. I was pleasantly surprised by the playfulness and yet serious empathic and sensitive approach by the organisers. They seemed ready to take some considered risks in order to get better and more challenging results than just plain safe ones.

One of the more theoretical papers that stood out was by Graham Pullin from Dundee University. On the previous Include conference (in 2007) he had already made a strong plea for ‘good design’ (this may well have set us all in the right direction for this year’s conference). This year he presented a few glimpses of the contents of his new book ‘Design meets disability’. In the book he addresses some of the key issues in inclusive design (e.g. why can hearing aids not be as fashionable as eyewear?) and describes his conversations with leading designers about their views on these issues. I am very curious to read the book.

The workshop I appreciated most during the conference was the one on Design for Patient Safety. In this project an impressive line up of experts from various universities and the health care sector are collaborating on innovations for new mobile treatment solutions (smart pods) and the prevention of medical error. They were very open in sharing their experiences and learnings from developing this collaboration. They have all put in considerable effort to find common ground between their expertises, and did not hide that this is not always an easy ride. But they were keen to point out how much added value their collaboration has given to the project and to the results so far. Hearing this, and benefiting from their generously guided group exercises in the workshop, was very encouraging. In terms of safe and risky stories I would say that they were realistic in pointing out that the biggest barrier to innovation may be the implementation of the innovations within the large organisations.

Finally, a few last comments related to my personal interest in the area of (inclusive) design: the actual involvement of the people for whom the design is for in the development process. I am always curious for new insights on how to facilitate empathic conversations between designers and people, so I tend to keep my ears open for any interesting remarks on this subject. I was very surprised to hear one of the speakers say that although most design students are nowadays trained to do user research as part of the project preparations, they seldom use the outcomes of these studies to inform their designs. I was even more surprised to notice that several people around me nodded and said “that is so true”. Apparently the user research these students do is just to thick a box and then conveniently ignore the results. This is bad news for inclusive design education.

Another remark I noted during one of the morning debates was that studying market trends is not the same as doing research on user needs. This is indeed a confusion you sometimes hear from people in the industry. They may proudly announce that they are ’studying users’, but if these studies are based on large scale market analysis rather than talking to and observing real people in their daily lifes, then it is questionable if you can really speak of user centered design. But, having said that, these were just some very minor afterthoughts on what was alltogether a very succesful and enjoyable conference.

The work in progress presentations by the research associates of the Helen Hamlyn Centre were quite impressive this year. I am already looking forward to the exhibition of their final results in September!

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In-depth studies that reveal how people use media and technology in their daily lives. The objective for these studies is to explore consumer needs and responses to concepts for new interactive services. The results are used as input during the early stages of the development process of these services. For each project we select the most suitable research method, such as interviews, focus groups, observation, diary study, probe study or documentary.

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We organised five User Forums for Heartlands, the regeneration project in Cornwall we work for as Inclusive Design facilitators all year in 2008, together with Yanki Lee of the Helen Hamlyn Centre at the RCA. The User Forums are aimed at testing some ideas that have been developed by the design teams. One of the Forums focused on navigating Heartlands. We worked with ‘extreme users,’ here people with a disability (from being blind to having difficulties with walking or learning), because we expected their needs and ideas to be extra demanding regarding navigation affordances and aids. We used the fruit because we didn’t want to use a very detailed and fixed model of the site. That would have suggested everything is already decided and fixed, and people would probably have hesitated to add trails of nuts to a fancy model.. Unfinished models, call them prototypes, are often best to work with we find.

All User Forums were documented in a highly visual and narrative way to ensure optimal communication of results. Each responsible design team had at least one member participating and they used the documentation to tell the stories to their colleagues.

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As part of our long-time involvement in the Heartlands project in Cornwall as inclusive design facilitators, we organised a series of workshops to generate ideas and conversations about the futures use of some of the new buildings. In these workshops the main aim is to initiate and facilitate in-depth conversations between the design teams and the people they are designing for. The setting for this is not traditional large-scale public consultations, but rather co-creation workshops and story telling events. In collaboration with local creatives we first did 3 preliminary studies, based on interviews, that resulted in personas. These personas informed 3 co-creation workshops that were held on the site of the future park and buildings and each addressed a different part of Heartlands. Finally we will do 5 user forums early Summer, wherein specific aspects of the detailed designs were discussed with a mixed group of stakeholders from the local community, local organisations, the design team and the client teeam. (UK, 2008)

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