Better Care Homes | Design Guidance

Better Care Homes was a web resource for care providers to help them improve care home design for older people with cognitive, sensory and motor impairment. To improve understanding the website included detailed ability profiling of older people with dementia and disabilities common to ageing. It promoted better design by linking residents strengths to tangible design improvements aimed at helping people maintain autonomy, independence and quality of life.

My Role | Senior Research Associate

I lead the project as part of my role as Senior Research Associate for the HHCD. Over a one year period I conducted literature reviews, primary research at 25 sites across the UK and Europe, designed UX, created the content for the site and ran periodic review workshops with a panel of industry experts. I also worked with a graphic designer and two other part-time researchers to complete final outputs.

Ability Profiling | Understanding Disability

Care homes must cater for a wide range of disabilities among their predominantly older residents. However care home operators and designers can struggle to reconcile the different and changing needs of residents within the constraints of existing resources and cost structures. The Ability section of the website mapped out the diverse cognitive, sensory and physical needs of care home residents and related these needs to design guidance. The work highlighted how the built environment could focus on residents strengths to enable better interactions. You can read a long form version of the content for the original ability section of the site here.

Design Guidance | Features to Promote Ability

The Design section of the website showed everything from the large-scale site layouts of new homes to the specific details and furnishing of individual rooms. It was built to be accessible and work both as an information source to new designers and as a tool to consolidate wide ranging ideas from experts in the field. You can read a long form version of the content for the original design section of the site here.

Product Efficacy | Impact and Implimentation

The work contained on the website was presented at numerous events including the anual Dementia Congress. Design guidance was utalised by Bupa and other care home providers.

The project also served as a valuable resource to the HHCD and assisted in further funding oportunities and follow on projects for people with Dementia. After eight years the website was retired.