Improving Representativeness in Participatory Design Processes with Elderly
Jonas Sorgalla, Peter Schabsky, Sabine Sachweh, Miriam Grates, Elisabeth Heite · 2017
This paper presents a novel approach for increasing the representativeness in participatory design in the context of an aging society. In the research project QuartiersNETZ we are facing the challenge of including a large and heterogeneous target group into a participatory design process to create software solutions, which foster an independent and self-determined life for a broad range of elderly. Regular formats like neighborhood meetings, which are used as spaces for participatory design, are only attended by a certain type of elderly people. Hence, we present our ongoing work of creating empirical life situation types and selecting corresponding representatives. Our approach combines methods from social science, requirements and usability engineering to especially include groups who are rather difficult to integrate into open participation formats increasing representativeness in the participatory design process.