Designing self-care for everyday life

Abstract

Managing chronic conditions can be challenging. People in such conditions, and the people around them, have to: deal with symptoms, adapt to the resulting disability, manage emotions, and change habits to keep the condition under control. Self-care technologies have the potential to support self-care and mediate the relationship between patients (and caregivers) and the condition. However, these technologies often disregard the complexity of the settings in which they are used and fail to become integrated in everyday life. In this workshop we will discuss how to design self-care technologies that are in harmony with people's everyday life. Therefore, we invite designers, researchers and practitioners to participate in a full-day workshop in which we will reflect on each other's work, and do a design exercise with patients and caregivers.