Participatory design is widely advised as a means for designers to have direct contact with people living with dementia, establish a designer-participant connection and design products that meet participants’ needs. However, involving people with dementia in the design process often poses challenges, showing the need to explore alternative methods to design for people who have dementia. This research investigates the use of handover approaches in design education. A handover approach is a coherent set of organising principles, methods and tools to carry out the process of transferring information about people living with dementia. This study provides a descriptive qualitative analysis of the development and evaluation of a handover workshop through case studies in five educational design contexts. Each case started with the handover workshop, followed by a design process involving participants with dementia. Upon analysing the outcomes, intriguing findings occurred regarding the perceived resonance and positive impact of the handover workshop on the participatory design process. This paper moves away from the use of handover approaches as an alternative design approach and instead moves towards the use of handover approaches to create a more general understanding and awareness for people who have dementia in the initial phases of the design process. The paper discusses (1) how handover approaches can prepare designers for participatory design together with people living with dementia, and, (2) the contribution of handover approaches to the participatory design process. These insights contribute to a growing understanding of the potential of handover approaches in supporting participatory design together with people with dementia, adding to existing methodologies.