Collaborating with elderly end-users in the design process

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.