A person - centered approach for fall prevention: Embodying the goals of older adults in personas

This research constructs older adult user personas as design and communication tools to assist in the co-design of person-centered interventions for community-based fall prevention. Designers require innovative approaches to represent the user goals of older adults. Compliance rates associated with fall prevention recommendations are low. In order to create accepted fall prevention interventions, new ethnographic tools are required. If person-centered fall prevention is to be successful, the co-creational design methods underpinning it must embody the goal-driven ideologies of person-centered thinking. A qualitative content analysis of 20 community aged care documents was conducted. The results informed the production of a series of user personas; two of these are presented. The personas were created using a coding and persona design process that embodies the co-creative values of personcenteredness with a focus on the individual goals of older users. The personas represent the voice of older adults and provide a means to communicate, tailor, improve the design of fall prevention interventions and contribute to the decision-making process. We expect that this method of persona-construction and the resulting personas will inform solutions that are better accepted thereby preventing falls amongst older adults. Further evaluation is required to verify the efficacy of this method.