5 Discussion and Concluding Remarks
The three cases represent some of the design work we have initiated with people whose
age, frailty, diagnosis or limited capacities, both physical and cognitive, often excluded
them from participation in technology design processes. Involving these vulnerable
users as designers in the design of their digital lives requires, however, considerable
adaptation of existing design methods as well as the development of new methods,
including better methods of working with proxy user groups, as in the case of elderly.
In all three cases, we experienced that the participants were eager to participate in
our study. The technology designs - learning games with the school children, privacy
settings with teenage patients, and video conferencing and the communication wall
sessions with elderly adults living alone – were perceived as relevant to their lives.
The first challenge, and one of the major we experienced, was related to finding
out about the technology needs of vulnerable users. In the case of the school children,
these needs are often formulated by other stakeholders, in particular the teacher and
the school management. Teenage patients were able to express their own technology
needs. The elderly adults living alone in nursing homes couldn’t express their
technology needs. Their lack of familiarity with technology hinders them to verbalize
what they might want or need. On the other hand, the younger, active elderly living
alone were highly eloquent in talking about technology and even thinking about their
future needs. Thus, in some ways they do and in some ways they do not adequately
represent the group living in care units. How to bridge this gap is a challenge we need
to address through future research.
It became clear, in all three cases, that designing with vulnerable users often needs to
take place on a one-to-one basis. We could not create a proper participatory design
process with the three groups of users. Each school kid had such particular challenges,
that we had to relinquish the idea of designing one learning application with the whole
group of children. The hospitalized teens were separated from each other because they
were confined to their individual rooms – some of them in isolation. The active elderly
needed the private space in order to get an opportunity to look into their very private
feelings of loneliness and communication patterns. The number of connections shown
on their communication walls could not be taken as indicators of their well-being, andwe could see that clearly through working with them. The communication wall was an
enabler for expressing the feelings around the topic of loneliness.