The purpose of this paper is to present effective methods of participatory design of a mobile tool with individuals who have anterograde amnesia.This is a condition where the individuals affected have extreme difficulty storing new memories but are able to better recall events that happened prior to the start of their condition. The paper analyzed other related research studies, and noted that most of the past research focusing on participatory design have only done so in one on one situations with the researcher and the individual with amnesia, because it can be counter productive trying to work with several of them at the same time due to the range of cognitive abilities of individuals suffering from this condition. However, this study focuses on ways that they get individuals with this cognitive disability working together as a group.
The study utilized interviews and site visits (design meetings) to gather the data they needed for the study. They worked as a group through the entire project lifecycle from requirements gathering down to the low level design. The researchers incorporated these techniques in order to support the memory of the amnestic group members
- They incorporated structure into their design meetings by reviewing material constantly including meeting agendas, minutes of previous meetings, summaries etc. They also structured their meetings in different unrelated chunks so the participants didn’t have to remember information from the previous chunk to continue with the meeting.
- They created good environmental support by holding meetings in a place that the participants were already familiar with, and constantly made use of name tags to remove the stress of trying to find their way, and remember each others names.
- They emphasized physical artifacts by relying on external memory aids for the participants eg calendars and action items, and distributed paper documents to comunicate meeting information and prototype design in order to constantly help them remember what to do.
- They documented all their design history by sending notes to the participants PDA’s. This made the participants really happy because they could share what they worked on with their families as they usually forgot.
Overall, they used the strategy of assessing each participant, understanding the participant’s cognitive deficit, choosing a suitable method to involve them in the design, and adapting that method as necessary to continue to accomodate the participant’s needs. With this strategy, they were able to successfully involve people with cognitive disabilities into their design process, and hopefully create a product better suited for them.
I think this group of researchers made really good strides in the area of participatory design. For their study, they didn’t involve people with really severe cognitive deficits, and I’d like to see in further research to see if they can employ these same strategies and acheive success with design partners suffering from extreme anterograde amnesia.
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