Student Engagement in Sensitive Design Contexts: A Case Study in Dementia Care

There is a growing body of HCI work that seeks to understand and enhance the lived experience of people with dementia. The majority of this work involves researchers working alongside people with dementia and their carers, focused on the design project outcomes. In order to enrich the social context of this work, we explore broadening participation to include student volunteers. To encourage mutually engaging experiences in this design context, careful consideration of how to support both students and people with dementia is needed. In this paper, we present two case- studies of co-design projects between students and people with dementia. Our findings detail the use of design methods to reconfigure the role of the residents in care contexts and the students learning process. We discuss the project learning outcomes as well as practical and ethical considerations to support the use of design methods to support mutual engagement in sensitive contexts.