Game over or play it again and again. : participatory design approach within Special Housing

Abstract: Activities that are fun, social, engaging and put something at stake are positive for your health no matter age or condition. What can you do if you suffer from dementia and are living at a Special Housing? According to research you should dance, visit the garden, get tactile massage discuss artworks etc. Still, despite all these proposals there are many voices from this domain, telling stories about living without live. Suffering from dementia may affect your ability to speak for your self and initiate activities. How can we know what they want and not what we think they need but they don’t seem to get or might not even want? Why don’t we ask them?We propose more focus on participation and design methods to guide the way.In this report, the author discusses the experience in conducting a Participatory Design research project intended to develop a technological and a related organizational intervention. The aim was to support people with dementia living in a Special Housing with fun and engaging activities. A short description of Participatory Design as an approach within research projects and a description of how it was used in this research study are given. We then discuss the experience in conducting the research, some of the users’ comments and responses, challenges, success stories and drawbacks when trying to design and test an activity in a readymade setting with fixed schema for several weeks ahead. The overall reflection being that Participatory Design has great potential for interventional projects and research focusing on leisure activities in everyday life for people with dementia.We proposes this being due to the two concepts – participation and design