Maarten Houben

• Assistant Professor - Department of Industrial Design - Eindhoven University of Technology
• Assistant Professor at Eindhoven University of Technology

The transition from home to formal residential care is described as stressful and emotionally difficult for people with dementia and their informal caregivers. While HCI research investigated how technology supports people with dementia at home or in formal care, there still is a need to understand how technology can support care transitions. This...

Conversational User Interfaces (CUIs) are becoming increasingly applied in a broad range of sensitive settings to address the needs and struggles of vulnerable or marginalized users. Sensitive settings include, for instance, CUIs mediating the communication difficulties of people with dementia or supporting refugees to cope with new cultural practi...

Dance exercises offer recreational and social activities that engage people with dementia in physical exercise to increase fitness and cognitive functioning. However, there is limited research on how technology supports people with dementia to initiate and engage in music-supported dance exercises at home. We present Switch2Move: a TV-based home sy...

Media architecture exploits interactive technology to encourage passers-by to engage with an architectural environment. Whereas most media architecture installations focus on visual stimulation, we developed a permanent media facade that rhythmically knocks xylophone blocks embedded beneath 11 window sills, according to the human actions constantly...

This book gathers the revised and selected contributions to the 6th Dementia Lab Conference, D-Lab 2022, held on September 20-22, 2022, in Leuven. It describes original and innovative research on how design can contribute to the quality of life of people with dementia, their loved ones, and caregivers. The papers highlight the value of participatio...

Researchers are investigating how soundscapes can reduce agitation and contribute to the well-being of people with dementia. We advance this research by exploring further how to incorporate the personal background and preferences of individuals with dementia in soundscapes to evoke storytelling and meaningful activity in their everyday surroundings...

People with dementia and their caregivers aging in place have expressed the need for social, emotional, and recreational interventions at home. Listening to everyday sounds evokes memories and provides conversational cues to support social relations and elicit emotional responses for people with dementia. However, research has yet to explore how th...

Research in HCI is increasingly investigating the role of technology in supporting meaningful and social activities to enhance the lived experiences of people with dementia. However, to further enrich the daily experiences in care, more insight is needed into how technology can directly promote social participation and pleasurable experiences in ev...

As dementia progresses, it often prompts changes to living arrangements and care provision as people with dementia are required to move from their home environment into long-term care. Over time, family members may lose touch with the everyday lives of people with dementia and no longer share the everyday moments that preserve identity and social c...

This book gathers revised and selected contributions to the 5th Dementia Lab Conference, D-Lab 2021, organized online on January 18-28, 2021, from the Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver, Canada. It describes original strategies in which design or creative methods have been shown to uncover, support and enhance the abilities of people...

Music and familiar everyday sounds can be meaningful for people with dementia by providing benefits such as evoking memories and emotions or prompting social interactions with caregivers or relatives. Motivated by this potential, researchers and designers are investigating how to leverage these beneficial effects of sound in care environments throu...

Motivated by the successes of music in dementia, researchers and designers in HCI are exploring the potential benefits of non-musical sounds from everyday life for people with dementia. Research in the field of building acoustics and psychology is suggesting that re-presenting everyday sounds as soundscapes in the care space can influence emotional...

Research in design and HCI is investigating the role of design interventions in adding value to the quality of life of people with dementia. However, the sustainable use of design interventions in care environments remains challenging due to the complex values and needs of all involved stakeholders. In this paper, we present the results of two work...

The representation of sounds derived from everyday life can be beneficial for people with dementia by evoking memories and emotional responses. Despite this potential, integrating sound and sound-based interventions in care facilities has not received much research attention. In this paper, we present the findings from a field study that explored t...

Memory loss is one of the most frequent symptoms associated with dementia. Losing the memories of meaningful social activities, such as visits from family, can be confronting not only for the person with dementia, but also for relatives and caretakers. Through an iterative design process involving people with dementia, caretakers and relatives, the...

People with dementia often experience a lack of social engagement after moving from the home environment into long-term care. Professional caregivers aim to build social relations with residents in dementia care homes to empower and socially include them during everyday care. However, the natural imbalance between the caregiver and the cared-for po...

People with dementia often face problems during eating activities, due to the loss of physical and cognitive functioning. With an increasing amount of research suggesting how everyday sounds can have beneficial effects for people with dementia, we raise the question whether everyday sounds related to eating can improve dining experiences in care fa...

This paper explores how we can design personalised auditory experiences for people with dementia (PwD). We introduce a new product design called the SoundscapePillow. The SoundscapePillow is a long tubular shape changing pillow that enables personalised auditory experiences for PwD by listening to (nature) soundscapes. The built-in sound system pro...

There has been an increased interest in researching the beneficial effects of everyday sounds, other than music on people with dementia. However, to turn this potential into concrete design applications, a qualitative understanding of how people engage with sound is needed. This paper presents the outcomes of three workshops, exploring the personal...

In this demo we introduce our ongoing research on how to leverage the situated visualization of open and citizen science data within public space to inform and engage citizens. We developed an open-source toolkit, coined "Citizen Dialogue Kit" that is able to convey data visualizations on a set of interactive, wirelessly networked displays that can...

Current media architecture practice demonstrates the rich potential of interactive media in our built environment for various economic, social and cultural purposes. However, the meaningful integration of interactive media with(in) architecture remains challenging, as architects typically expect that media-specific qualities amplify the architectur...