Professional caregivers want to provide feelings of security and comfort to people with dementia in advanced care, but limited resources frequently restrict professional caregivers from doing so. One potential solution to make social, non-verbal connections with people in advanced dementia care is the use of artifacts that offer comfort and stimulating tactile experiences. In this study, we explored the role of two design artifacts, the Mano Quilt, a weighted blanket, and the Mano Fold, a foldable pillow, in supporting caregivers to increase feelings of comfort and security in people with advanced dementia through warmth. In a field study, we collected data through observations of 26 residents with dementia who interacted with the two artifacts and 17 interviews with their formal caregivers in three care organizations. We reveal which aesthetic and material qualities evoke haptic and bodily experiences such as presence, comfort, and activity and how the artifacts support existing caregiving practices. We encourage future researchers to design to enrich the senses as an aesthetic experience and provide emotional support and companionship to increase well-being for people with advanced dementia.
This paper explores the integration of co-design and art-making in developing technologies that support personhood in dementia care. While technologies for dementia care have advanced, there remains a gap in creating solutions that are directly informed by the experiences of people living with dementia and support their individuality. In collaboration with the specialist arts organisation Bright Shadow CIO, our work involves engaging people living with dementia in the design process. Over five weeks of co-design sessions, 44 participants worked alongside artists to craft four physical boxes that represent ``meaningful places.'' The physical boxes were then transformed into VR environments, allowing participants to immerse themselves in and interact with their creations from a first-person perspective. Our findings demonstrate that VR alone is insufficient in dementia care. For VR to be meaningful, it must be be part of a broader intervention that includes trust-building, sensory engagement, and creative involvement. Within this process, art-making serves as both a method and medium, providing a means of self-expression and connection to identity. Our findings challenge conventional approaches to dementia-focused VR, advocating for a shift toward inclusive and care-driven technology design.
The progression of dementia leads to a loss of initiative and agency,
halting daily activities, hobbies, or social encounters. Open-ended
play can encourage initiative but remains underexplored in demen-
tia. This paper explores how technology-driven design can support
open-ended play, making social interactions more enjoyable and re-
newing interest in daily activities. We conducted five workshops at
dementia daycare facilities, observing people with dementia engage
with playful circuit-building toolkits to identify strategies. Find-
ings reveal these toolkits stimulated self-direction and initiative to
accomplish self-imposed goals, both independently and collabora-
tively. We show how open-ended play fosters confidence, resilience,
social engagement, and self-expression, allowing people with de-
mentia to exercise choice and share moments of achievement. We
provide design implications for technology to stimulate initiative
through open-ended play by 1) balancing structure and freedom, 2)
emphasizing novelty and material diversity for non-verbal social
connection, and 3) considering age-appropriate aesthetics.
Blind people have limited opportunities to explore an environment based on their interests. While existing navigation systems could provide them with surrounding information while navigating, they have limited scalability as they require preparing prebuilt maps. Thus, to develop a map-less robot that assists blind people in exploring, we first conducted a study with ten blind participants at a shopping mall and science museum to investigate the requirements of the system, which revealed the need for three levels of detail to describe the surroundings based on users' preferences. Then, we developed WanderGuide, with functionalities that allow users to adjust the level of detail in descriptions and verbally interact with the system to ask questions about the environment or to go to points of interest. The study with five blind participants revealed that WanderGuide could provide blind people with the enjoyable experience of wandering around without a specific destination in their minds.
Intertemporal reflection, flexibly thinking forward and backward in time, is vital for one's future planning. Yet, cultivating intertemporal reflection about encountering difficult futures, e.g., developing a progressive cognitive condition like dementia, can be challenging. We assessed people's attitudes towards dementia following conversing with a chatbot presented as either neurotypical or simulating dementia symptoms. While neither the chatbot’s presentation nor the framing of participants’ future selves impacted attitudes toward dementia, it influenced participants' experiences. When framed as future selves, the chatbot evoked a strong emotional connection, leading to reflection on aging, particularly with the chatbot simulating dementia symptoms. Participants interacting with the chatbot framed as a stranger with simulated symptoms often felt frustrated, especially when they had a task-oriented mindset. Chatbots can be promising tools for prompting reflections on challenging futures, such as dementia, although their effectiveness varies due to the tensions between simulated cognitive decline and expectations for effective communication.