A cross-over cooperation is a way of approaching social issues that require knowledge drawn from different felds. The new publication ‘Care for Design in Care’ describes the experiences of a diverse team with the cross-over project called FIT. The social issue to be tackled in this project concerns people living with dementia and how they can find suitable products and services that correspond to their needs for living independently at home.
The research project was given the name FIT because we are seeking a 'fit' between supply and demand. To ensure that this 'fit' corresponds to and is useful in practice, professionals from different sectors worked together: care professionals, the interest group, entrepreneurs (focusing on the provision of services to people with dementia) and researchers from the creative industries and the social sciences. People suffering from dementia and their (family) carers were involved in thinking about and giving feedback on the results at every phase of the research process. The products and services developed were extensively tested in the ‘living lab’ Gooi en Vechtstreek region.
Our aim with this publication is to show, from the perspective of the FIT project, how it is possible to become inspired by working together in teams where di erent disciplines provide input and within which common, useful results emerge (in co-creation with the target group), but also to identify the pitfalls along the way.
We will be covering both the (essential) tensions of such a cross-over and the strengths and dynamics this involves. To arrive at new insights, in this project we adhered to the starting points for co-creation in order to stimulate ‘collective creativity’. We will describe the co-creation approach and the mindset that ensures a flexible, open process, within which there is scope for unexpected ideas. We support our own experiences with the underlying theory and research data.
The publication was presented on 24 October at the Dutch Design Week 2017.
