Abstract
This paper describes the interaction mechanism and content design of the “A Better Visit app” — a collection of touch screen tablet mini-games developed for people living with dementia and their visitors to create enjoyable shared experiences and spark social interaction between them. The published collection, available on the App Store and Google Play for tablet devices, is made up of eight different mini-games. The games were developed and refined over an 18-month co-design and observation process and matured to solutions that support easy to use games leading to meaningful interactions during the visit. Emphasis is placed on different sensory and creative experiences, skill development, and communication between the visitor and resident to live their relationship in the moment of time. The outcome are a specialised set of interaction mechanisms and recommendations developed to aid in the accessibility of the technology experience for people living with advanced dementia.
Keywords
Interaction Design; Dementia; Engagement; Games
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2020.370
Citation
Murphy, A., Favilla, S., Pedell, S., Beh, J., and Petrovich, T. (2020) Designing Novel and Engaging Interactions with and for Residents Living with Dementia and their Visitors, in Boess, S., Cheung, M. and Cain, R. (eds.), Synergy - DRS International Conference 2020, 11-14 August, Held online. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2020.370
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Designing Novel and Engaging Interactions with and for Residents Living with Dementia and their Visitors
This paper describes the interaction mechanism and content design of the “A Better Visit app” — a collection of touch screen tablet mini-games developed for people living with dementia and their visitors to create enjoyable shared experiences and spark social interaction between them. The published collection, available on the App Store and Google Play for tablet devices, is made up of eight different mini-games. The games were developed and refined over an 18-month co-design and observation process and matured to solutions that support easy to use games leading to meaningful interactions during the visit. Emphasis is placed on different sensory and creative experiences, skill development, and communication between the visitor and resident to live their relationship in the moment of time. The outcome are a specialised set of interaction mechanisms and recommendations developed to aid in the accessibility of the technology experience for people living with advanced dementia.