Searching for Empathy - A Swedish Study on Designing for Seniors.

This paper is a call to rethink how we describe groups of users and create design tools that may influence the design practice and foster specific mentalities. Many times, research literature plays an important part in the design process and decision making, yet the role it has in creating an understanding of the user is seldom discussed. To support a project focusing on designing for seniors, a multidisciplinary team selected relevant literature for the beginning of the design process. The literature selected consisted of ‘mental’ design tools such as methods, considerations, and design domains to support understanding and designing for seniors. This paper describes the tools suggested by the articles and concludes with a reflection on the effect of the literature we choose on the design process using the project as a design case.