Shital Desai (York University)

Profile

Current Activity
My research efforts focus on developing services and technologies to support seniors to enjoy a good quality of life. This means that technologies should support them with their impairments, but give them agency and autonomy and they should be able to participate in everyday activities. Examples of support areas are adaptive assistive technologies for dementia support and chronic pain management. This is done in ongoing consultations with seniors and other stakeholders such as caregivers and healthcare providers. A human centred design approach that uses ethnographic research methods for working with seniors coordinated with design creation at every stage in the form of prototypes is used.

Areas of Interest

  • Age-friendly communities
  • Pain 
  • Driving 
  • Housing 
  • Dementia 
  • Technology

Approaches to Innovation

  • Human centred design 
  • Participatory design

Student Mentorship
Looking to supervise:

  • Undergraduate students
  • Master’s students
  • PhD students
  • Older adults pursuing higher education