SOUND AND DEMENTIA

Studies have demonstrated that it is important for people with dementia to maintain and create social bonds and interaction with family, friends and new people. By maintaining such social bonds, the quality of life for early stage dementia patients can be largely improved. Day-care facilities can nourish the need for social interactions, and partly take away the burden experienced by the caregiver. However, going to daycare is not always possible, and certainly not during an pandemic. We harnessed the power of sound and designed a social activity for people with dementia that can be played from the home environment.

MY ROLE

During this project I focused particularly on the context of the project. My role was performing the background research and sketch the context of the project. To achieve this, I went through an extensive meta-analysis process. Based on this, I explored the design possibilities and created multiple low fidelity prototypes.

“ I also designed the exterior for the final product ”

MY THOUGHTS

Due to COVID-19, my team and I were not able to obtain much conversation

with our target group. Instead, we empathised with our users by having conversations with

other stakeholders. For example, with people that have a family member with dementia. This

allowed us to not only empathize with our targeted user specifically, but also with the other

stakeholders involved. In the end, I believe this eventually led to a wider context and a more

complete project.