Design Research: Six Views in a Box: Dialogues on everyday life with Alzheimer's

This book is a report from a class on design research at the Danish Design School. Ten students had ten weeks to conduct design research based on approaches, methods and techniques from co-design focusing on the Alzheimer’s disease as experienced by people with Alzheimer’s, their relatives and close relations, and professional caretakers. Alzheimer's destroys brain cells, causing memory loss and problems with thinking and behavior severe enough to affect work, lifelong hobbies and social life. As Alzheimer’s is a fatal disease that affects many people, there is a strong interest in finding ways to better understand the consequences of the disease, spread the knowledge to more people and diagnosis the disease as soon as possible. The class was partly sponsored by Johnson & Johnson, an international pharmaceutical company. The students also collaborated with the Danish Alzheimer Association. Future designers need competence in co-design. Just as important is the need to establish various formats for how to maintain the research results and make these a valuable asset for further inquiry. Thus, the outcome of the class is a box that can be used by Johnson & Johnson and other professional organizations in a user-driven approach to explore and learn what it means to identify and admit that a person has Alzheimer’s. Apart from making contributions to the common box, the students have written reports in which they reflect on their work both in relation to the design research process and the outcome. This book is an edited version of their reports written by the students. Our hope is that it can be an inspiration for other people.
Thomas Binder, Eva Brandt and Morten Noer Andersen
Lecturers, The Danish Design School