Guidelines for user requirements elicitation in design for assistive technology: a shower chair case study

Abstract

A substantial proportion of the world population currently lives with some functional limitation that directly affects their daily lives. In this context, the prescription of assistive technology has been fundamental in promoting an individual's independence, social inclusion, and well-being. However, high abandonment rates of these devices have been reported and are commonly associated with the non-correspondence to personal needs. Designing customized and personalized products, especially for multidisciplinary applications, requires levels of systematization and user participation that are not well addressed by traditional methods. This paper introduces customization-based guidelines for requirements elicitation integrated with the House of Quality matrix and assistive technology assessment protocols. The proposition was based on clinical evidence, research experiences, a literature review, and a theoretical model. A shower chair case study was conducted with twelve users to demonstrate the approach's potential during the task planning and clarification stage. The strategy allowed the systematic identification of the central sources of dissatisfaction and the definition and prioritizing of user requirements in a multidisciplinary domain. The procedure led to analyzing demands that had not been initially conceived by the engineering team while also providing communication facilitators between the different knowledge domains and incorporating participatory design elements into the early stages.