Workshop: Ambiguity, empathy and narrative co-design: The user experience of reading dementia care comic

The World Health Organisation has anticipated that by 2030, 82 million people will have dementia and 152 million by 2050. In this user-centred online workshop, participants will read, compare and discuss two short comic books resulting from user-centred design and narrative research design methods: Parables of Care: creative responses to dementia care (Grennan, Priego, Sperandio, Wilkins 2017) and I Know How This Ends: Stories of Dementia Care (Priego, Wilkins, Martins, Grennan 2020).

Enabled by screen/document sharing via videoconferencing software, participants will 'user-test' both comics, interrogating concepts of ambiguity, fracture, empathy and the genres of the parable and tragedy, and will be prompted to discuss the challenges and opportunities for co-desinging their own creative responses in comics form.

The workshop seeks to test the hypotheses and motivations behind both comics and will allow participants to discuss and provide direct feedback on the narrative co-design methods employed in the creation of both comic books, in a practical effort to fully place the users/readers in the centre of the research and development cycle.