Providing Information about Older and Disabled Users to Designers

In order to make a real difference to the products and services available to older people, we need to influence and equip those who design these products in practice. In particular, these designers need information about the end users. This paper discusses different formats that can be used to provide this information, such as personas, detailed disability information, simulations and contact with real users. It considers the advantages and disadvantages of the different formats and how they fit with designer’s work practices. We also describe some of our work in producing information in these formats and outline plans for evaluating them with designers.