Dr. Niels Hendriks

Niels is the research coordinator of the research unit Inter-Actions, the research cluster on ‘Design, Care, empathy and well-being’ and also a design researcher and lecturer at the LUCA School of Arts. In his research work, he mainly zooms in on how people with high support needs and little means of communication can be involved in design research (mainly people with dementia). This includes a focus on verbal and non-verbal ways of communicating and looking at the inherent ‘communicative’ potential of artefacts. Next to that, he has zoomed in on method development focusing on tacit and latent knowledge in care contexts (the Keep-Change-Delete method to name one) and the way designers can communicate the ‘richness’ of an experience with people with dementia to larger groups (the method story-approach). Next to a participatory approach, his work takes on a systemic view: how does an artefact and those ‘using’ the artefact influence each other and how will this change the care ‘system’ as a whole.

Niels is also the co-founder of the Dementia Lab which clusters research and educational activities and the name of a conference on dementia and design (fifth installment in 2021, proceedings published at Springer). He is a reviewer for numerous journals and conferences and has been on the program committee and organising committee of the Participatory Design Conference.  He has been active mainly in Belgium, but has been working in Hong Kong and Denmark as well.

Dr. Andrea Wilkinson

Andrea is a post-doctoral researcher in Design and Art Education at the LUCA School of Arts and is a lecturer in the Masters of Design and Art Education programme and a researcher in the Inter-Actions Research Group. She also is a lecturer and researcher at Thomas More University of Applied Sciences in the Postgraduate Space and Service design programme. A designer as well as being a researcher and lecturer in design, her expertise domains are interaction design, visual language communication and service design. In her research, she mainly focuses on the experience of the designer and how empathy emerges from interaction and participation with design-poor individuals (people with dementia, young people with autism, people with a disability, people on the fringes of society, etc). This relation-based design participation (that is situational, and takes place in lived-environments instead of lab-based situations) between designer and participant and necessary proxy participants informs design decisions (products, services, functionality) as well as the designer’s future creative practice.

In 2016, together with Dr. Hendriks, she co-founded the Dementia Lab Conference. A native of the US, but based in Belgium since 2010, Andrea is active mainly in Belgium, but has also worked in New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK and Portugal in workshops and educational exchanges.

Dr. Andrea Wilkinson

Rita Maldonado Branco is a communication designer, and a design researcher in the DementiaLab/Inter-Actions Research Unit, at LUCA School of Arts. She is also a lecturer at University of Minho in the Product and Service Design master’s programme, and an integrated member of the Research Institute for Design Media and Culture (ID+), on the research group Health+Design Lab. Rita graduated with distinction in the MA Communication Design (2012) from Central Saint Martins University of the Arts London, with a project that explored communication design contributions to dementia, including the design of information, the creation of empathy objects, and the development of tools for interaction between people with dementia and others, based on her experience with two grandparents diagnosed with dementia. This research was taken forward through her PhD in Design (2018), at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto in partnership with the University of Aveiro and ID+.

In her work, she is interested in the symbiosis between the design practice and research, namely research through design approaches, and on how design can be used to support inclusion, participation, empathy and education. Her practice-based doctoral research focused on designing ways to support the maintenance of social relationships and communication between people with dementia and their families, while involving them as participants in the design process. As a communication designer, her professional practice revolved primarily around editorial, information and science communication.

Rita’s research is published in several peer-reviewed articles in international conferences and journals, such as the Participatory Design Conference, the Codesign journal and more recently, in a chapter on the book HCI and Design in Context of Dementia, edited by Rens Brankaert and Gail Kenning. She has been active between Portugal and Belgium but have also worked in the UK and Denmark.

Lieke Lenaerts

Lieke is a Belgian designer. In 2018 she graduated as Master of Arts in Product Design. During her studies Lieke discovered the power of design to communicate to the public. Her work is characterized by this layer of communication. This informs a wide variety of topics from the complexity of the human mind, to the relationship between crafts and local heritage.

Lieke’s work has been exhibited internationally, with an ongoing focus on the communicative aspects of design. Thorough research is the heart of her work. In combination with her own personal view, Lieke dissects a theme and translates it into a visual design language. Objects are used as active agents to inform users about a certain topic. This research-based working method results in functional and experimental designs, balancing between the object and the experience.

In 2019 Lieke started a position as designer-researcher at the Inter-Actions Research Unit, DementiaLab, based at LUCA School of Arts Genk. As a designer-researcher she’s involved in projects focusing on design for people with dementia. In 2020, Lieke began a PhD at LUCA in which she’s researching ways to turn participative design experiences with people living with dementia into accessible design processes, tools and artefacts for other designers.