Palliative care focuses on improving the patient’s quality of life and the quality of life of the family caregiver. However, in reality, the focus is often on the patient’s needs and not on the family caregiver’s needs. Therefore, the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) has developed the Oog voor Naasten en Nabestaanden (ON2) method, stimulating healthcare professionals to provide systematic support for family caregivers. However, this method needs to be personalized and detailed for every institution to fit its current workflow. Therefore, this project aims to design a tool that lets healthcare professionals visualize the journey of the family caregiver in their institution, so they can personalize the method and gain insight into which aspects of the ON2 method will be most interesting for them to implement.

During this project, various research activities have been performed to get insight into the family caregiver’s journey. The needs and experiences of family caregivers have been investigated with literature research to use as input for interviews. In the interviews with family caregivers and healthcare professionals, the journey of the family caregiver is explored in four healthcare settings. The healthcare settings involved in this project are the hospital, nursing home, hospice and home care. The result is four journey maps.

The input and experience of these journey maps have been used as input for the design brief. This project aims to let healthcare professionals create the journey of the family caregiver in their institution, so they can reflect on the desired quality of life of the family caregiver and become inspired to implement the ON2 method. Twelve design guidelines provide insight into how to achieve the design goal and interaction vision and are used as input for the ideation phase. In ideation, various concepts are explored in iterative brainstorming and co-creation sessions, which have led to the final design.

The Oog voor Naasten workshop is the final design of this project. The workshop is used as an inspiring kick-off for the implementation of the ON2 method. The design lets the healthcare professionals create the journey of the family caregiver with the help of various tools. Once they have visualized the journey, the workshop provides questions to reflect on which needs should be better fulfilled and how these can be fulfilled in the future. At the end of the workshop, the insights are summarized and used to detail the implementation’s action plan further.

The final design is tested in the hospice setting with four healthcare professionals who reacted enthusiastically and positively. During the workshop, they became aware of the steps that were part of the journey of the family caregiver, were inspired to act, and better fulfil the needs in the future.

However, further research is required to evaluate the workshop in other healthcare settings. The following design should be more intuitive, so it will take less time to figure out the steps.

In conclusion, the workshop supports healthcare professionals in personalizing the ON2 method by letting them create the journey of the family caregiver, so they can reflect on the desired quality of life of the family caregiver.

Intimacy is important for every human being. It contributes to our social contacts, physical health and quality of life. Intimacy also plays an important role in the lives of elderly, despite certain prejudices. Nevertheless, there is often a lack of attention for intimacy in elderly care. This graduation project therefore aims to give intimacy a place in elderly care. During this project, a literature study and interviews with professionals are conducted to explore the current state of knowledge. An additional user research with resident in elderly care is done to explore the user needs. Multiple design directions are explored with creative sessions, quick prototyping and user testing. A final design is created based on all the collected insights, which is evaluated with care givers and residents. Intimacy is defined as a social interaction between two persons, which creates a reciprocal feeling of connectedness. It consists of intimate behavior and intimate experiences, that can take place with different intimate relationships. Intimacy is a broad concept and very personal, since everyone has different needs and desires. Care givers in elderly care are often unaware of the importance of intimacy for residents. Intimacy is barely discussed and care givers do not act on it considerately. Due to a lack of education about intimacy in elderly care, care givers find it hard to handle intimate needs and desires. Discussing intimacy is also challenging since it is a personal and sensitive topic. The goal of this project is to create awareness about positive intimacy for residents in elderly care, and to provide care givers with a conversation starter, by designing a small moment of intimacy in public that is active and light-hearted. Creating awareness about the existence and importance of intimacy is the first step in making a change in the behavior of the elderly care context. A Bed of Roses, or in Dutch ‘Onder de Wol’, is the final design of this project. The design is a humorous and intimate photobooth of a vertical bed, in which residents can take a photograph with their partner, family, friends or care givers. This photograph is then printed and can be used as a conversation starter in combination with a booklet. This booklet contains introductory questions and illustrations about different types of intimacy. Care givers can use to booklet to initiate a conversation with residents. The photographs from the photobooth are also largely printed and displayed in a public photo exposition in the residency. The final design is tested with residents and evaluted with care givers, who all react positively and enthusiastically. Intimacy can not be forced, but a small moment of intimacy can be stimulated with a light-hearted activity, such as A Bed of Roses. The final design brings a joyful and intimate moment to the residents with the photobooth, provides care givers with the booklet that gives them confidence for a conversation and creates awareness about intimacy in elderly care with the photo exposition.

Frail elderly have an increased risk to get involved with care. Shared decision making can help ensure that this care contributes to the elderly´s quality of life, instead of only extending life. To enable shared decision making, clear communication between the elderly and care professionals is needed, however, this communication is especially difficult for frail elderly. Therefore, it is useful to prepare these elderly for potential care decisions and help them to express themselves, in order to only provide them with care that actually contributes to their quality of life. The aim of this project is:“To design a tool for the frail elderly to help them timely express their desired quality of life, so that care can contribute to their actual quality of life.”In this research, explorative research in the form of interviews, observations and design interventions, is used to form understanding in the problem and define design guidelines for the final design.The desired quality of life is defined as what someone desires to do, whereas actual quality of life addresses their abilities. The research helped to understand desired quality of life from the perspective of the frail elderly and define it as a combination of their current happiness, and their beliefs, which together form their wishes. For these elderly expressing their desired quality of life without aid is difficult, particularly because they perceive their future as limited and existing methods focus mainly on the negative aspects of their future. This unintended negativity is what inspired the vision to start communication with the frail elderly, when they are still relatively autonomous, and support them in portraying their desired quality of life in a tangible manner. This results in the following design goal:“Spark a socially frail visitor to collect & create their own Quality of life Portrait together with a meeting center employee, so the visitor can reflect upon their desired quality of life & share their wishes with others in order to treasure them together for the future.”The design goal also presents five conversation elements: Spark, Reflect, Collect, Create and Share.Nine design guidelines give insight in how to achieve these conversation elements and design for the conversation’s interaction, content and tool. Throughout the conversation, the desired interaction qualities are: trustful, encouraging and invigorating.The final design ‘Door mijn ogen’ is a conversation package that contains instructions for the care professional and a booklet for the frail elderly. Thereby the tool helps the caregiver to prepare for their role as listener and encourages the elderly to become the narrator and writer of their desired quality of life story. The vision and design brief are as relevant as the conversation tool, and hold the potential to inspire further design and research. This project shows a way to help the frail elderly express their desired quality of life in order to improve their actual quality of life by preparing them for personalized care decisions.