JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

COVID-19 has changed many people's lives and modes of participation. The pandemic and its different countermeasures put a new lense on interactions between professional researchers and community participants, both in terms of negotiating the positions between the parties and in terms of taking and giving care. Care here is a broad concept, encompassing medical and physical care acts, as well as assistance, support, and concern to promote mental and social health.

Objective:

Our research questions were: “How can digitally mediated participatory design (PD) work during COVID-19 and how can we understand digital PD as care?” The objective was to investigate whether and how caring participatory design is an appropriate approach during pandemics and whether and how this approach can contribute to the care of people who might be in need.

Methods:

We reflect on the PD process and examine how the actors enact care and what aspects of care are manifested. The project, “ACCESS”, took place in Siegen, Germany, and targeted the co-creation of a mobile demo kit aimed to improve the digital literacy and everyday appropriation of digital media with and for older people in their homes. Research experiences of the projects SFB 1187 and SNSF 74 CareComLabs contributed to the reflections on care and caring communities.

Results:

The research project included preparatory work for enabling older adults to become participants with a group of university researchers. The use of digital technology has allowed the participatory project to continue, as well as to draw attention to the digital skills of older adults and ways to improve their digital literacy as part of care. Through a series of workshops, a range of current IT products were explored by a group of 21 older adults. We provide empirically based concepts of older adults in accommodating themselves as well as sensitizing concepts for differentiating aspects of care according to Tronto and of participatory design using digital tools. The data suggests that it is not enough to focus solely on the technologies and how they are used; it is also necessary to focus on the social structures in which help is available and in which technologies in particular offer opportunities to do care.

Conclusions:

We examine how the actors, the research participants effectively enact care and demonstrate how such ‘care’ is a necessary basis for the genuinely participatory approach. We identify how different forms of care were carried out, and thereby provided support during COVID-19. We document how the co-creation of different digital media tools can be used to provide a community with mutual care and support.