ABSTRACT
To design in collaboration with users, speaking and listening are essential. This article shows the process of interviewing people with a communication disability called aphasia. Aphasia is caused by brain damage and affects speaking, understanding speech, reading, and writing to some degree. The focus of the article is on the creation of visual tools to facilitate the understanding of questions and producing answers by people with aphasia. Everything has to be adapted to match their needs: the wording, the types of questions, the way a question is introduced, and the length of the interview, among other things. For every question, specific material was designed to facilitate communication between the person interviewing and the person with aphasia. The strategy was to combine verbal information (oral and written), pictorial information, and movement. The main goal of the interviews was to understand the feelings and opinions of people with aphasia regarding the diagnosis process. The interview results helped identify people’s preferences regarding the context in which the assessment takes place, as well as their needs regarding the visual materials used. The project demonstrated that it is possible and valuable to apply a user-centred design approach to the design of the visual material used to assess aphasia.KEY WORDSinterviewing; communication disabilities; aphasia; user-centerer design; visual tools to facilitate understanding; collecting opinions; identifying feelings; outline only; line and tone; and color images; checking assumptions; object recognitionINTRODUCTIONIn face-to-face interviews, talking is the main tool for getting people’s perspective and opinions about a subject. Hammersley and Atkinson (cited in Legard, Keegan, & Ward, 2003, p. 138) stated:The expressive power of language provides the most important resource for accounts. A crucial feature of language is its capacity to present descriptions, explanations, and evaluations of almost infinite variety about any aspect of the world, including itself.Difficulty in producing or understanding language is a hallmark of aphasia, so it can be difficult to obtain these descriptions, explanations, and evaluations. It can also be difficult during the interview with people with aphasia to avoid making them feel frustrated and get tired. However, to gain insight into the patients’ feelings and opinions regarding specific aspects of the assessment situation and to identify design possibilities, it was fundamental to interview patients.In the aphasia literature, a clear need appears to use every possible avenue to obtain the necessary information. “The aim of an …interview is to obtain as full and unbiased an account as possible of the participant’s perspective on the research topic, and the researcher’s task is to use every means at their disposal to aid this” (Legard, Keegan, & Ward, 2003, p. 158). Similarly, Luck and Rose (2007) stated “both the interviewer and participant may need to use particular strategies for a successful communication exchange” (p. 209). The interview had to be adapted and planned with the needs of people with aphasia at the centre. Several questions needed to be addressed: How to facilitate comprehension? How to avoid fatigue? How to reduce frustration? How to facilitate answering the questions? It was fundamental to work in close collaboration with a speech therapist. These points are addressed under the subtitle “Method.”PARTICIPANTSThe main selection criterion was people with aphasia who can understand brief questions, answer by pointing to images or saying ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and read brief words. Since this research was conducted in Italy, participants needed to have Italian as first language. Age, gender, level of education, socio-economic level, and time post onset were not selection criteria.Based on this, the speech therapist contacted people with aphasia who met these requirements, and she had a brief conversation with them, by phone or personally.
