Pushing boundaries of co-design by going online: Lessons learned and reflections from three perspectives.

The global COVID-19 pandemic made significant changes to our day-to-day lives, which impacted how we conduct research and design - including co-design. In this article, we present case studies from three different co-design groups that pushed the boundaries of traditional co-design, and conducted multiple co-design sessions (more than 150 total) over the last year and a half. The case studies for each team include: the transition to online co-design; the pros and cons of logistics and design tools utilized during the co-design sessions; and the advances, challenges, and surprises. We compare and contrast themes that emerged from the case studies and present additional dimensions that need to be addressed as researchers utilize online co-design and advance methods to conduct online co-design.

Investigating Best Practices for Remote Summative Usability Testing with People with Mild to Moderate Dementia.

People with dementia may miss out on the benefits of using technology, because they often find it difficult to use. Usability testing is one method to identify barriers and areas for improvement in technology. Unfortunately, usability testing is often not conducted with people with dementia, independent of their caregivers. Difficulty recruiting local participants with dementia who regularly use technology further compounds the problem. Remote methods have been proposed as one approach to recruiting hard-to-reach populations. Currently, it is unclear how to effectively conduct remote summative usability testing with people with dementia. We recruited 15 participants. Five took part in the pilot study and 10 participated in the main study. We identify best practices and make suggestions for remote summative usability tests with people who have mild to moderate dementia, independent of caregivers. We discuss our findings in three sections: (1) logistics for planning remote summative usability testing, (2) approaches for conducting remote summative usability testing, including modifications of research methods, and (3) considerations when evaluating findings from remote summative usability sessions. We also present modified usability testing methods we developed to meet the unique needs of users with mild to moderate dementia, and summarize lessons learned and new directions for research on this topic.