DESIGN FOR THE ELDERLY: AN IMMERSIVE HUMAN DIGNITY EXPERIENCE FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
Year: 2024
Editor: Grierson, Hilary; Bohemia, Erik; Buck, Lyndon
Author: Oyervides-Ramirez, Griselda Esthela; Marquez Canizares, Juan Carlos
Series: E&PDE
Institution: Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico
Page(s): 193 - 198
DOI number: 10.35199/EPDE.2024.33
ISBN: 978-1-912254-200
ISSN: 3005-4753
Abstract
There are different population groups that present conditions and require special considerations within the product design process, such as the elderly. The UN defines “an older person as a person who is over 60 years of age “(2020). The present research focuses on the development and implementation of a specially structured design process based on said segment of the population divided into four stages: Research, Conceptual design, Detailed design and Implementation. As part of the methodology, a literature review was done to define the stages and elements necessary to apply the design process proposed (Hanington & Martin, 2012), and the structure suggested in the analytical program of the course was taken as a basis. Once the process was defined, it was implemented in a sample of two groups of students of the Product Design degree studying the sixth semester of the Tecnologico de Monterrey (30 students in total), who developed product design projects (14 in total) for a nursing home in the city of Monterrey, Mexico. During the course, the students visited the nursing home on several occasions identifying a problematic situation through observation and interviews with the elderly people and their caregivers, they also had numerous interactions to present their ideas and validate the iterations of prototypes. At the end of the course, a survey-type instrument was applied to the students to evaluate the impact of the model on their educational experience and to validate the special characteristics of the process proposed in this research. As a result, they positively evaluated all stages of the process, highlighting the Detailed Design stage as the one that contributes the most value to the development of their disciplinary competencies and pointed out the Implementation stage as the most challenging. Likewise, the students positively assessed the nursing home personnel's participation in the project's development, emphasizing its importance during the Research stage. On the other hand, the students recognized the differences of this design process compared with their previous experiences in other Design courses. The development of the project had an impact that transcends the practical aspects, working with elderly people implies deepening empathy with them and considering their vulnerability, also paying attention to their human dignity due to the dependence they have on other people to attend their basic needs. Students also recognize the value of distinct types of users who interact with the products. In this sense, the relevance of the personnel was observed; they constantly experience situations of deprivation when attending their basic needs. In conclusion, it was possible to determine that the design process proposed in this research allows the development of products that meet real needs that tend to go unnoticed due to the lack of consideration of the different users, where each of them may have a different perception of the same activity simply because of the way in which it is related to it, as occurs in this case between the elderly person, their family and the caregiver at the nursing home.
Keywords: design process, human dignity, elderly, higher education