Meet the co-designer

John is a 55-year-old father of two young women, he lives together with only his girlfriend. He has a very friendly and outgoing personality. Over a decade ago he suffered a stroke that triggered his aphasia and short term memory loss. Rehabilitation improved his symptoms but over time progress halted. Nowadays his short term memory loss affects his daily life the most. Even though his condition has had a huge impact on his life he is very humble, kind-hearted and has a very positive outlook on life. Because he is unable to learn new things he stopped having ambitions because of how unachievable they would be. He lives life one day at a time trying to better himself as a person. In his free time, he reads a lot, watches YouTube and TV, and plays the board game Go. He likes to cook for himself and his guests. He even came up with his own recipes trying to make a more Egyptian dish. John likes to have philosophical discussions with his friends. His vast knowledge of history and philosophy makes him an incredibly fun person to have a conversation with, whether it be the countless stories he can tell or to share his well-rounded ideologies.

A timeline of John’s life can be seen below, mainly focussing on his career.* He studied Egyptology, prehistory and protohistory. By trade, he is an archaeologist and information expert. He has had to change career paths after he got a stroke in 2009, indicated by the dot in the schematic. Nowadays, he volunteers at a museum once a week. Additionally, he arranges city tours.

John is sitting in his chair and is reading a book. Reading books is one of the things he likes doing most. Right in the middle of the story, he hears his phone making a sound. When looking at the notification, he sees that he needs to leave for the dentist. In fact, he has to leave right now and needs to leave everything he was doing at that exact moment. He specifically set the timer like this because he would forget about the notification five minutes after. As usual, he grabs his bike to move from one place to another. John arrived at the dental practice on time and is ready for his treatment.

Now the treatment is done, he needs to schedule a new appointment with the dentist's assistant. John is standing in front of her desk inside the waiting room. Two families are waiting there, so it is a bit noisy. The assistant asks if he is available next Thursday at two o'clock. John is checking his iPhone Calendar Application to see if he is free that day. He realises he can book an appointment then, so he is filling it into the application. He struggles with filling in the text since several people are talking in the background. Besides that, the assistant is explaining the upcoming treatment to John in the meantime. These things make it hard for him to focus and consequently it will take a few minutes to create the appointment. He does not only have to set a time and date but a notification to function as a reminder as well.