Abstract
Eldercare is one of the wicked problems with social-economic-cultural threefold that is also one of the themes that we designers are eager to respond to, through our design intervention, especially in the era of technical innovations. However, is there something we are missing when exploring the technological development? Thus, questioning the direction of how we designers as outsiders respond to the complexity of eldercare service, the researcher conducted the ethnographic fieldwork with care workers in the local context of Hong Kong. After that, this study identifies the series of conflicts with ethical dimensions embedded in everyday intimate care services and then proposes design considerations of how to construct the Ethics of Care in interactive intimate services like bathing and toileting. The main conflicts are: when care workers have to face the hierarchical surveillance from the institutional discipline, dirty bodily waste and sexual body parts through intimate care service for the elderly, how to construct the Ethic of Care for both care workers and elderly residents? We cannot ignore the ethical issues in everyday care services when discussing how to design better nursing homes, whether tangible or intangible design interventions and projects. From multi layered conflicts of intimate care services in the micro-macro context, this study proposes three themes of design considerations: Transparency of Care, Body Boundaries and Discipline of Care. Following the universal values of protecting the human right of dignity from both care providers and care receivers in the intimate eldercare, these design considerations developed from real-world observations with the theoretical framework of the Ethic of Care, are proposed for designers in exploring a better eldercare for future nursing homes.
Keywords
Design for Ethics of Care; Intimate Care Service; Design for Dignity; Design Considerations
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.972
Citation
Du, Y., Lee, Y.H.,and Siu, K.W.(2025) Design Considerations for Ethics of Care of Intimate Care Services in Elderly Nursing Homes: Transparency, Boundaries and Discipline, in Chang, C.-Y., and Hsu, Y. (eds.), IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.972
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Track 9 - Healthcare Design
Design Considerations for Ethics of Care of Intimate Care Services in Elderly Nursing Homes: Transparency, Boundaries and Discipline
Eldercare is one of the wicked problems with social-economic-cultural threefold that is also one of the themes that we designers are eager to respond to, through our design intervention, especially in the era of technical innovations. However, is there something we are missing when exploring the technological development? Thus, questioning the direction of how we designers as outsiders respond to the complexity of eldercare service, the researcher conducted the ethnographic fieldwork with care workers in the local context of Hong Kong. After that, this study identifies the series of conflicts with ethical dimensions embedded in everyday intimate care services and then proposes design considerations of how to construct the Ethics of Care in interactive intimate services like bathing and toileting. The main conflicts are: when care workers have to face the hierarchical surveillance from the institutional discipline, dirty bodily waste and sexual body parts through intimate care service for the elderly, how to construct the Ethic of Care for both care workers and elderly residents? We cannot ignore the ethical issues in everyday care services when discussing how to design better nursing homes, whether tangible or intangible design interventions and projects. From multi layered conflicts of intimate care services in the micro-macro context, this study proposes three themes of design considerations: Transparency of Care, Body Boundaries and Discipline of Care. Following the universal values of protecting the human right of dignity from both care providers and care receivers in the intimate eldercare, these design considerations developed from real-world observations with the theoretical framework of the Ethic of Care, are proposed for designers in exploring a better eldercare for future nursing homes.