Towards a Decision Support System for Improved Accessibility in Multi-Family Housing: Co-Design of an Application for...

The demand for accessible housing is increasing. More people are expected to live longer and live more years with reduced functional capacity in ordinary multi-family housing. To address this, detailed knowledge of accessibility problems in the existing housing stock and systems that could contribute to efficient collaboration between housing industry and authorities concerned is needed. This paper introduces a project with the overarching aim to develop and evaluate a new decision support system (DSS) to inventory and support decision-making for improved accessibility in multi-family housing in Sweden. The specific aim is to describe the initial app development phase and to investigate the design-team interactions and their impact on the outcome. The app will constitute the core part of the new DSS. This phase involved co-design to fit the practice context at target and meet users' needs and expectations. The co-design process served to identify user requirements to guide the development. Housing Enabler (an internationally acknowledged instrument for assessment and analysis of accessibility problems) was the methodological starting point. The prototype app enables professional inventory of environmental barriers and registration of subsequent work for accessibility improvements. A fully functional prototype of an app including an example apartment database is ready for usability studies and further iterative refinements.