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Feelings of loneliness and social exclusion are a widespread phenomenon of digital modernity occurring across nations and cohorts, and it is therefore a significant area of interest to be addressed by the policies of welfare states and by designers. Existing research emphasises qualities in probes and probing such as providing inspiration and informing designers as well as enabling dialogue and collaboration. However, limited attention has been paid to the fact that probing and toolkits may require specific qualities where sentiments of exclusion are at stake. By examining a series of design interventions tackling loneliness, we analyse the type of methods that have been designed and used, their role and effect on relations between designers and participants as well as the design team itself. We also assess which tools failed to sustain their focus on initiating and deepening the dialogue among design participants. We conclude that dialogue and community building are essential goals in many areas of social design and suggest a framework for working with probing in this context. Probing is positioned as a way of deepening processes of interaction and inclusion with emphasis on the design proposal as a starting point for creating a community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Co-creation is seen as imperative in healthcare however existing frameworks are in need for adapting to specific settings from a person-centred care perspective such as shared decision-making, characterised by asymmetrical power relations and restricted time resources. This article takes a workshop in shared decision-making with doctors, nurses, patients and relatives as a point of departure for process reflection. The aim of the workshop was to develop implementation strategies for a decision tool for future cancer care. By analysing its concept and methods, we propose a general framework for design in health and social care, based on meeting fellow stakeholders, switching over roles, voicing and developing ideas and finally evaluating proposals (MOVE). By evidence of our research, we propose that empathy can be created and strengthened through co-creation in health and social care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 'new museology' (Vergo 1989), curating exhibitions has become a contested task. Participatory methods in education and curating have been used and debated as one of the tools to bring museums and visitors into contact in a new way. On the basis of an exhibition on family and kinship, based on praxeologic approaches in curating as well as in displaying the content, this article discusses critically the limits of such methods: they show up not simply in the museum in the form of a changeable ideology, but rather implicitly in all actions that unfold with the concrete use of an exhibition. Against the assumption of improving exhibiting with participatory methods, we think the ideal of participation to be in the same way marked with fault lines as traditional 'politics of display' (MacDonald 1989). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at elderly individuals, their possessions, and their ties to both space and time.1 How does the material constantly reflect the immaterial? How are everyday rituals and routines anchored and solidified in the built environment? This article is a study in the tradition of ethnographic research, aiming at a better understanding of how designed artifacts form and are formed by the context of their practice. The article explores people-centric values and beliefs inherently embedded in all artifacts. This study concentrates on materiality in a more complex, culturally informed way, in contrast with current trends that provide technological solutions for ageing groups in society. Findings from this study present a multisensual design approach that moves beyond the construct of ageing as a physically based design “problem”; instead, it favors material culture approaches that trace the development and changes in aesthetic and symbolic values throughout the life course. The insight presented is multilayered and includes subtle strategies and design solutions enacted by elderly informants themselves. The article thus shows useful starting points for thinking about design solutions with less emphasis on “technology-first” and much more on “people-first.” [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]