The “Who Cares For The Carers” project examines the experiences of informal caregivers
using a comparative approach between India and Finland. The research aims to
understand what forms of support networks and communities, whether formal or informal,
are emerging and evolving to provide support and nurture well being among the
caregivers.
What started with a simple research question “how do they cope?” turned into a
realization of the existence of the “caregiving experience” involving the caregiver(s), care
receiver and community. Through the analysis of our data, the complexity of caregiver
coping emerged – a systemic (or wicked) problem whose actionable research and design
opportunities needed to be conveyed to multiple stakeholders.
We approach the idea of systemic design thinking as a series of diverse, integrated
problems, which have multiple, integrated solutions. In this paper, we will focus on the
systemic problem of caregiver coping through the lens of space – a thought provoking
systemic problem within a larger systemic problem.
This paper explores not just the direction of future research and innovation for caregiving
– but how the role and approach of designers is changing and how that might effect on the
way we conduct design research and transfer knowledge.
DRS 2012 Bangkok
