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User Experience Design for Persons LivingWith Dementia- Current Methods and Experimental Experience

Authors:
Sabrina Knappe
Bruce Wallace
Laura Ault
Rafik Goubran
Neil Thomas
Frank Knoefel

Keywords: Ambient monitoring; Dementia; User Experience Design; Supportive Smart Home

Abstract:
Persons Living With Dementia present both a challenge and opportunity for ambient monitoring within smart homes. Persons Living With Dementia could benefit greatly from smart home technologies that monitor their well being and enable them to live at home longer. This potential has not been fully realized, partly because of the difficulty in creating interfaces that individuals with dementia can interpret and use. User experience design and user centred design aim to produce technology that is intuitive and accessible to target users. While traditional user experience design methods are difficult to carry out with Persons Living With Dementia, they can be adapted to better suit this population. By involving the families of Persons Living With Dementia in the design process, adapting the prototyping process, and encouraging empathy on the part of designers, smart home technology for ambient monitoring can be developed for Persons Living With Dementia in an inclusive way. The paper presents results from research projects where Persons Living With Dementia and those with less severe mild cognitive impairment have engaged with technology user interfaces. The results show that users were much more successful with simpler interfaces such as a touch screen over mouse and keyboard. They were also more successful with concepts that drew on early learnings. Our results also show that Persons Living With Dementia that experience night time wandering, can be supported with visual and audio cues from a supportive smart home system. This is a new user interface model for interaction with smart home systems that will require the involvement of PLWD in the design process.

Pages: 154 to 159

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2020

Publication date: March 22, 2020

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4359

ISBN: 978-1-61208-763-4

Location: Valencia, Spain

Dates: from November 21, 2020 to November 25, 2020