Working with experts with experience: Charting co-production and co-design in the development of HCI based design ideas

Abstract

This chapter outlines the co-design process for ‘Let’s meet up!’, a hybrid electronic system, which combines traditional board games and digital features, created to facilitate and maintain social engagement for people living with dementia. It allows people with dementia to stay in touch with their loved ones and to remain socially and physically active by arranging joint activities for themselves through a simple, user-friendly tangible interface. Let’s meet up! is one of four solutions developed by a multidisciplinary team of researchers and people living with dementia as part of the European MinD project. The aim of MinD was to research and co-develop mindful design solutions to support people with dementia and their caregivers with self-empowerment and social engagement. Co-design with groups of experts with experience (GEE), including people with dementia, caregivers and care professionals, was used throughout the research and development process, comprising data collection, design idea development, decision-making, design concept and prototype development, to ensure the relevance and appropriateness of those ideas, concepts and prototypes for people with dementia. Co-production was increasingly used to enable GEE to co-host and co-curate the co-design sessions, and to take ownership of the process. The chapter explains the process of research and the activities undertaken and provides recommendations for this symbiotic approach, taking into account both the benefits and the limitations.