A Participatory Design Methodology to Elicit Aging- in-Place Stakeholder Concerns with Ambient Assistive Living (AAL) Devices During COVID-19

For varying reasons, our world is experiencing increasing life expectancies and decreasing birth rates, which has led to a generational shift in population distribution. The Government of Canada predicts that in the year 2030, over 9.5 million (23%) Canadians will be 65 years or older. For this growing demographic of older adults, intelligent home health technologies have been proposed as one beneficial avenue to support and maintain an individual’s health and wellness as they begin experiencing aging-related health effects. However, many ethical concerns have been raised regarding the design and deployment of intelligent home healthcare technologies in aging- in-place settings such as long-term care and nursing homes. This paper presents a revised participatory design methodology to identify aging-in-place stakeholders’ ethical concerns with two Ambient Assistive Living (AAL) devices. The main objective of this paper is to develop and test a participatory design research method that is well suited for older adults living in long-term care settings, which is currently lacking. Developed by an interdisciplinary team of engineers and social science researchers, this paper presents the participatory method that was designed and tested in a long-term care facility by collaborating with a mix of aging-in-place stakeholders, including older adults and healthcare professionals. By interweaving interactive activities, hand-written tasks, and discussions throughout the data collection process, the methodology successfully identified stakeholders’ ethical concerns with the devices.