ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that with the growth of the digital infrastructures, care is increasingly dispersed in a collective of human and non-human relations, across public and private spheres. Technologies themselves are therefore increasingly entangled in relations between people, places and objects in everyday practices of care. Given this there is a need to consider how we might create spaces for co-habitation between social and cultural gerontologists and designers of technologies of care for older people in co-designing technologies for elder care.
The chapter draws on and critically analyses co-design methods adopted on the Tangible Memories project, a 22 month interdisciplinary project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the United Kingdom, which involved designing technologies to support democratic community building in care homes. The methodology of co-design discussed in this chapter suggests how researchers from across disciplines, technologists/designers and publics might coalesce around the ‘matter of concern’ of how to provide better care and support for older people in contexts of demographic change.
