Overview

My Co-Design Group (one absent)

For 8 weeks, I led a team of 4 co-designers, 3 of whom were between the ages of 50 and 80 through six 90-minute design sessions. Our goal was to teach them about the design process and create a paper prototype of something that can track and improve health care for older adults.
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For the next 10 weeks, I helped analyze and code data received from all 8 co-design teams.

Project Description

The goal of the Co-Designing with Older Adults DRG is to include the end users to create a prototype of something that can help older adults track and improve their health care. By integrating older adults in the design process, it gives them a voice in how what gets created! It also makes sure that the product that gets designed is something that they would actually find useful. It reduces the biases that us as designers us to make design choices. 

Project Details

Type: UX Research, Design, Co-Designing (Directed Research Group)

Team: The DRG team is comprised of 11 students with a mix of undergraduates and graduate students. The team was headed by Dawn Sakaguchi-Tang, a PhD student within the department of Human Centered Design and Engineering. We met every week to discuss and reflect on the previous week's co-design sessions as well as plan for the upcoming sessions. 5 designers led co-design sessions in Northgate, WA, while 6 designers (including me) led co-design sessions in Greenwood, WA. 

Co-Designing with Older Adults was a 2 quarter long Directed Research Group (DRG) at the University of Washington. Want to learn more? Scroll down to learn more about the co-design process as well as our final paper prototype and data analytics!

Greenwood Co-Design Research Team (plus our photographer!)

Co-Design Process

Weeks 1 & 2: Pre-Session Activities

For the first two weeks, the DRG Team met to go over how the sessions will look and logistics. We not only looked at what the sessions would be like, but looked at our past experiences with working with older adults. Most importantly, we took time to reflect on our biases and the biases of society on older adults. Finally, we talked about the importance of participatory design and its impact on design.

Affinity Diagram of What Health & Well-Being Means to Us

Week 3: Defining Health & Well-Being

In my first co-design session, the goal was to understand what health and well-being meant to the co-designers. After getting to know my co-designers, we decided to have everyone write down what health and well-being meant to them on sticky notes and created an affinity diagram. We grouped similar ideas together to get 6 main ideas. This showed me that their perceptions of health and well-being were vastly different than mine as a 21 year old. It also gave us a starting point to help see what they are looking for when discussing health.

Week 4: Health & Well-Being Life Events

In our next co-design session, the group reflected on experiences that have shaped their definitions of health and well-being. By having them reflect on their past, co-designers could see what were important moments in their lives and its effect on them. We placed these moments on a timeline. This activity gave insight on what was important to older adults. I also got to learn more about my co-designers and their vast experiences, helping build trust and empathy ​in the group

Timeline of Significant Health & Well-Being Life Events

Rating Various Technology

Week 5: Exploring Current Technology

To start the session, we brought in various technology and asked the co-designers to try them each technology, write down what they like and don't like about each, and rank them on a scale. The technology ranged from a smart watch to physical items. This was done to give the co-designers ideas of what their final product could be like. By seeing different ideas, co-designer can look at potential design requirements and provide insight on what they like/want in a design.

Week 6: Determining How Might We & User Personas

We used our previous weeks' work to help determine our How Might We statement. We realized that the biggest issue related to health and well-being for older adults relates to uncertainty in the future. Based on our conversation, we created the statement "How might we help plan major life transitions for retired seniors?" Based on our How Might We and other information, we created a user persona to help guide our design decisions. We focused on the goals, attributes, and frustrations of our group's research to determine the persona.

Richard the Retired Persona

Week 7: Ideating

We spent this session ideating different ideas for our product. Everyone was given 20-ish minutes to come up with 6-8 ideas for what they wanted the final product to look like. The co-designers created a variety of unique products and combined their ideas to make our final paper prototype. Based on their designs, we decided to further narrow the scope of our project to look at de-cluttering a house to ease the transition into an independent living home.

Week 8: Paper Prototypes

In our final co-design session, we created paper prototypes! After weeks of research and ideation, we were able to create a physical object! Our group decided to create DeClutter, a mobile application that allows users to organize their belongings. It gives the user the option to donate, giveaway, or sell any items they no longer want and can set reminders on other objects they are still deciding on keeping. The application also provides different ways users can get remove an object, something that older adults struggle with (such as finding a donation company that will pick it up for them). 

Reflection

The co-design aspect of the DRG taught me 2 very important lessons. The first is that users should be included in the process as mush as possible. I would have never thought about de-cluttering as a major issue older adults face, and instead would have stuck with my perceptions and biases. I also got to know my user group and made really good connections with my co-designers, hearing a lot of interesting stories that helped me understand their needs. Secondly, its sometimes good to slow down and reflect on why we do things the way we do. By teaching others about the Design Process, I slowed down and really thought about the importance of each step and the value it adds to the process instead of treating it as a checklist I need to complete.

Co-Designers doing a Reflection Activity after the Last Session

Data Analytics

Method

At the end of our 8 week co-design, some co-designers continued on to help analyze the data we picked got from our co-design sessions. All our co-design sessions were recorded, so we developed a codebook and analyzed videos, marking down significant moments and coding them based on what the content was and the context of who was speaking (how the designers were interacting with the older adults). Based on each session video, we also wrote memos talking about what we saw trending in the video every week. 

Once a week, the all the coders would get together and discuss what we saw in the videos we assigned. We saw it as a chance to ask clarifying questions and look at any similar patterns or themes. It was also good to hear what the coder saw in your co-design session (we never analyzed our own videos). Overall, I analyzed about 4 hours worth of video over 6 weeks (Weeks 1-2 and 9-10 were set up/practice and wrap up/reflection).