BACKGROUND: Conventional medical management, while essential, cannot address all multifaceted consequences of Parkinson's disease (PD). This pilot study explores the potential of a co-designed creative arts therapy on health-related quality of life, well-being, and pertinent non-motor symptoms. METHODS: We conducted an exploratory pilot study with a pre-post design using validated questionnaires. Eight individuals with PD participated in the program. The investigated intervention was a 10-week creative arts therapy with weekly 90-120-min sessions, guided by three creative therapists. Participants were allowed to autonomously select from multiple creative media based on their personal preferences. Explored co-primary outcomes included health-related quality of life (PDQ-39), well-being (ICECAP-A), anxiety/depression (HADS), executive functioning (BRIEF-A), resilience/mental flexibility (FIT-60), and self-efficacy (GSES). We used paired sample t tests for pre-post analysis of the co-primary outcomes and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests for PDQ-39 sub-scores. We also included aesthetic responsiveness (AReA) and healthcare consumption (IMCQ adapted for PD) questionnaires reported as descriptive statistics. RESULTS: The results showed a significant reduction in anxiety and an increase in well-being. We also observed a slight improvement in cognitive functioning. Finally, we noted a reduction in healthcare consumption (fewer visits at neurologists, specialized PD nurses, and allied healthcare professionals). CONCLUSION: These findings cautiously suggest that our co-designed, multi-media creative arts therapy has the potential to increase well-being and reduce anxiety, while reducing healthcare consumption. These preliminary findings support the need for a larger, randomized controlled trial to explore the therapeutic potential of creative arts therapy in PD care. ... Read more

Background: Recent research in the field of “Arts and Health” has demonstrated the beneficial impact of arts-based interventions on health and well-being across diverse populations. Recognizing their potential, especially in cases where conventional healthcare cannot address the multifaceted impact of conditions such as in Parkinson's disease (PD), our study advocates for an integrative approach in medical practice and neuroscience. We recommend incorporating learning environments from the design phase through long-term care. The arts offer a unique opportunity to create such environments. In this study, we specifically focus on individuals with PD, co-designing an intervention as a creative engagement learning environment and a PD-specific creative arts therapy. In this study, the narratives of those affected contribute as scientific knowledge, shaping care and increasing the intervention's relevance to participants' lives.

Methods: We used a participatory design-based research approach. Fourteen individuals with PD, along with three creative therapists and three researchers, collaborated through iterative design cycles to co-develop a creative arts therapy intervention. Qualitative data were collected through interviews, group reflections, and ethnographic observations. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis.

Results: The co-creation process resulted in a 10-week creative engagement intervention delivered in a “creative playground” setting. Participants chose from multiple media and autonomously decided their creative activities. Guidance from the creative therapists was provided as needed to support individual engagement and guide reflection and learning processes. Narratives offered insights into the relevance of autonomy in care, the role of the arts, and the individuality of disease experience, resulting in seven key features of our intervention framework, which include (i) intervention structure (e.g., duration of the intervention and sessions), (ii) freedom in selection of creative media, (iii) environment as a creative playground, (iv) skills of creative therapists, (v) PD-specific considerations, (vi) financial considerations and logistics, and we list (vii) responsibilities of the Design Team.

Discussion: This study establishes an initial framework for a PD-specific creative arts therapy intervention designed as a creative engagement learning environment. Future research will focus on rigorously evaluating its effectiveness and exploring its scalability in diverse settings. ... Read more

Due to dementia, people lose the ability to deal with complex tasks such as cooking. We can support this group by designing new tools to keep them active and enhance their feeling of self-worth. Previous studies have focusedon step-by-step guidance for people withdementia using innovative technology, which is often too complicated to learn and set up for the users. In this paper, we designed and evaluated an intuitive, non-intimidating, step-by-step recipe tool for people living with dementia. The tool is designed for collaboration to stimulate socialisation between people with dementia or with a caregiver. The design was evaluated in situ, with 36 individuals at varying stages of dementia. Participants were instructed to cook a dish using the recipe tool and reflect on its usability. The step-by-step approach of the tool appeared highly suitable
for people with dementia, and added visuals helped with understanding the recipe. The level of initiative shown by the participants with dementia seemed to depend on the amount of trust shown by the caregiver. We found that collaboration between participants during cooking as facilitated by the tool was
enjoyable and highly suited for both at-home and meeting centre settings. We offer several suggestions for designing step-by-step tools and encourage facilitating more collaborative, non-intimidating activities for people with
dementia and their caregivers. ... Read more

Artificial intelligence (AI) has recently been highlighted as a design material in the HCI community. This acknowledgement is a call for interaction designers to consider intelligence as a resource for design. While this view is valid and well-grounded, it brings with it a need to better understand how intelligence as a design material can be used in formgiving practices. This chapter seeks to address this need by suggesting a new approach that integrates AI in the designer’s toolkit. This approach considers intelligence as being part of, and expressed through, an object's character, hereby integrating artificial intelligence into a product's form. We describe and discuss this approach by presenting and reflecting on our experiences in a design course where students were asked to give form to intelligent everyday objects in three iterative design cycles. We discuss the implications of our approach and findings within the frame of third wave HCI. ... Read more

This paper introduces Cinematic Prototyping as a new method for designing the precise sensuous and aesthetic flow of product interactions. Having cinematic codes and techniques such as enactment, puppeteering, shot composition and storytelling at its core, Cinematic Prototyping enables the exploration and development of future interactions early in a design process without being restricted
by the limitations of any prototyping technology. As such, it provides designers with ways to fully concentrate on the exact interplay between product and user within a specific context, resulting in believable and engaging scenarios that are rich of expressions and meanings. The main principles of Cinematic Prototyping are presented, followed by a description of its application in a design course.
An example case is used to illustrate its results. The paper concludes with a discussion of its strengths and weaknesses and its potential for improvement. ... Read more

Futures techniques have long been used in large enterprises as designerly means to explore the future and guide innovation. In the automotive industry, for instance, the development of concept cars is a technique which has repeatedly proven its value. However, while big companies have broadly embraced futures techniques, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have lagged behind in applying them, largely because they are too resourceintensive and poorly suited to the SMEs’ needs and idiosyncrasies. To address this issue, we developed DIVE: Design, Innovation, Vision, and Exploration, a design-led futures technique for SMEs. Its development began with an inquiry into concept cars in the automotive industry and concept products and services in other industries. We then combined the insights derived from these design practices with elements of the existing techniques of critical design and design fiction into the creation of DIVE’s preliminary first version, which was then applied and evaluated in two iterations with SMEs, resulting in DIVE’s alpha version. After both iterations in context, it seems that DIVE suits the SMEs because of its compact and inexpensive activities which emphasize making and storytelling. Although the results of these activities might be less flashy than concept cars, these simple prototypes and videos help SMEs internalize and share a clear image of a preferable future, commonly known as vision. Developing DIVE thus helped us explore how design can support SMEs in envisioning the future in the context of innovation. ... Read more

In this paper we present an approach to address interaction styles from the start of a design process using video as the main design tool. We argue that video with its visual and auditory richness, its dynamic and temporal character, and its narrative structure, is a natural medium for the exploration and generation of interaction styles. As part of an honours track within our regular industrial design bachelor program, some 25 students participated in a short module, in which they were introduced to
the concept of designing interaction styles. Consisting of four workshops of four hours each, the aim of the module was to have the students experience how they could go through a design process starting from the “how” rather than from the “what” or “why”. Throughout the module, video was consistently
used as the only means to document and present the results. Overall, the application of video turned out to be insightful as well as critical. Through creating, reviewing and improving their videos, students developed sensitivity for what is ‘wrong’ or ‘right’ when designing an interaction flow. Finetuning this flow, however, proved to be quite difficult, having to master both video and audio editing software to a considerable extent. Developing skills in preparing, shooting and processing video thus
turned out to be crucial, since these are required to get it ‘just right’. Currently we are therefore looking into options to create an exploration toolkit that would make the alignment and manipulation of video and audio more accessible. ... Read more

Many of the techniques service designers currently use to represent their ideas in the conceptual phase of their design process, such as service blueprints or customer journey maps, are rather abstract, static and schematic. While this might be valuable from an analytical, high-level perspective, such representations do not address the full contextual, emotional and spatial-temporal richness of real-life services. This paper argues that design fiction, because of its focus on telling stories about possible implications of new and emerging technologies, could have the potential to address this particular issue early on. While design fiction is currently mostly associated with more ‘underground’ design domains, such as speculative design and critical design, its principles might also be applied to service design, to visualize, explore and probe potential service scenarios already in the beginning of a design process. ... Read more

In the landscape of design research, several techniques of speculative design -or design about ideas- have been positioned, each with a different time
frame. Design Fiction and Critical Design, for instance, emerged as making activities that explore the near and the speculative future, respectively. We previously defined
Vision Concepts as a design-led technique that explores and communicates speculative futures. Even though Vision Concepts, such as long-term concept cars and
products, have been part of the industry since 1938, previous work has failed to identify and understand them from the design research perspective or compared
them with other speculative design techniques. This study intends to identify which spot Vision Concepts occupies within the landscape of design research. To that end,
we developed a multiple case analysis that includes examples of Vision Concepts, Design Fiction, and Critical Design. This paper will help design researchers identify the
similarities and differences between Vision Concepts and the other speculative design techniques and gain knowledge about when and why to apply this technique. ... Read more

Innovation forces organizations to think about the future. The many techniques guiding these explorations are named futures studies, which are inquiries into images of the future and their surrounding elements. Although futures studies help organizations to change, their results are often difficult to interpret, and they frequently fail to involve middle-level managers or the public at large. As design is a future-oriented discipline, it is remarkable that the futures studies and innovation management literature do not cover design-led techniques to boost the innovation process. This paper fills a part of this gap in the extant literature by discussing Concept Cars in the automotive industry, a phenomenon in which design plays a prominent part. Since the first Concept Car, it has become clear that automakers do not make these tangible models to mass-produce and sell them, but they mainly view them as a brand builder. Although Concept Cars are broadly recognized as an interesting phenomenon, little academic work has been conducted on them. This paper discusses Concept Cars as a design led futures technique, and aims to understand their purposes, outcomes, and development process. Our study used multiple methods, including ten interviews with design experts, observations on Concept Cars at a motor-show, and a review of three Concept Cars. We find that Concept Cars help organizations to change through an inquiry into images of the future. Concept Cars offer a design-led approach of researching the future, where visual synthesis, prototyping, and storytelling play an important role. Concept Cars act as probes that simultaneously explore technologies and styling while also communicating a probable, plausible, and preferable future, in one time-horizon. Unlike managerial futures techniques, Concept Cars provide tangible futures that people with different backgrounds can experience, influencing several parties involved in developing an innovation. A Concept Car has two main limitations. The development of a Concept Car is a resource intensive process and results in a single outcome. We conclude that Concept Cars or Concept Products can complement other futures techniques and may also be used by companies operating in other industries when looking for new ways to innovate. ... Read more

Information technology support of office work has increased rapidly in functionality, but new ways of interacting have evolved more slowly. This paper adds to the design research community's notion of interaction quality by exploring these new ways of interacting and comparing them in the home and work contexts. We describe and analyze two interview studies conducted with office workers to consider how they perceive, experience and compare interaction qualities. Six interaction qualities (instant, expressive, playful, collaborative, responsive and flexible) were identified that together embody an interaction style that we have labeled 'Generation Y.' From learning and comparing these qualities, we found that personal and natural type of interactions were mostly experienced in the more private home context. Formal and subtle type of interactions were mostly experienced in the more public work context. We also found that the office workers scored the interaction qualities in their home context as richer than in their work context. This study resulted in a set of design guidelines, aiming to be used to implement the Generation Y interaction style in future office tools and applications. Designers and researchers will benefit from the result of this study from understanding rich interaction design in the work context. ... Read more