Browsing by Subject "Elderly user"

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    Collaborating with elderly end-users in the design process
    (Springer, London, 2000) Demirbilek, O.; Demirkan, Halime; Scrivener, S. A. R.; Ball, L. J.; Woodcock, A.
    The fact that end-users can participate and contribute to the design process, was pointed out in previous studies on user participation to the design process conducted by Cavanagh (1996), Ciccantelli and Magidson (1993), Mitchell (1995), Morini and Pomposini (1996), and Reich et al (1996). For Howes, et al (1998), participatory design is a design methodology, European in origin, giving an important contributory role to the end-user in the development of products they would eventually use. This paper presents a study (Demirbilek, 1999) in which elderly end-users were invovled in the design process by means of participatory design sessions. In these sessions, the expertise of designers and the comments and ideas of elderly end-users were applied to how doors and door handles for domestic use should be designed. Two different design sessions were run for each group of elderly end-users.
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    Universal product design involving elderly users: a participatory design model
    (Elsevier, 2004-07) Demirbilek, O.; Demirkan, H.
    Recent studies have shown that people prefer to age in their familiar environments, thus guiding designers to provide a safe and functionally appropriate environment for ageing people, regardless of their physical conditions or limitations. Therefore, a participatory design model is proposed where human beings can improve their quality of life by promoting independence, as well as safety, useability and attractiveness of the residence. Brainstorming, scenario building, unstructured interviews, sketching and videotaping are used as techniques in the participatory design sessions. Quality deployment matrices are employed to find the relationships between the elderly user's requirements and design specifications. A case study was devised to apply and test the conceptual model phase of the proposed model.