Conference article

This paper reports on the first author’s ongoing Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded PhD research, exploring the potential for design disruption interventions within the context of informal health and social care. The paper describes a specific project to map the experiences of people caring for dementia patients, exploring their interactions with governmental and charitable support organisations, their perception of the services available to them, and other informal methods they employed to cope with the caring role. The findings offer a new way of visualising the complex interrelationships between these organisations, and highlight a number of important issues faced by informal carers. These include a pressing need for clearer, more accessible support pathways, clarification of the role and duties of some support organisations, and the value of intangible forms of assistance such as emotional support. These findings will form the basis for future disruptive design interventions in this area.

design disruption, mapping, health, social care, informal, intervention, carer, dementia, visualization, timeline, PhD, research, experience