OBJECTIVES: Prioritize investment and tailoring interventions in the field of mental health care depends, largely, of the availability of decision-relevant data on population preferences. Preference elicitation methods, particularly, Discrete Choice Experiments (DCE) application has becoming increasingly popular in the field of health care research.  The present study aims to describe the design of a DCE approach applied to elicit elderly preferences towards depression. METHODS: The set of attributes and levels was developed from a literature review and in consultation with experts. The PHQ-9 Depression scale was selected to base the wording of attributes and levels. The design of the DCE, and the software presentation were refined resorting to a pilot study, composed 20 blocks of choice tasks of 2 pairs of scenarios. Each scenario was composed by 5 attributes. To evaluate the respondent’s performance during the DCE we relied on data on about time to complete the task, and difficulties in response as they were reported by the participants and observed by the interviewer. An electronic version of the instrument was developed by a team of programmers. RESULTS: A total of 10 elders, aged 60 to 82, completed the questionnaire. The overall understanding of the instrument was satisfactory, however all of them found fulfilling 20 choice tasks tiresome. The participants’ performance improved with practice. CONCLUSIONS: The DCE was adjusted, according to a result of the pilot study. As major changes we sign the reduction of the number of attributes per option choice (from 5 to 4), the reduction of the number of choice tasks (from 20 to 10) and the introduction of warm-up choice tasks, as an example, to help the interviewee to understand the exercise logic. Application of DCE, using a Tablet PC as platform, was well tolerated by the elderly, and seems to be a viable alternative to other methods of extracting preferences alternative.