Sanne Beijer’s research while affiliated with Eindhoven University of Technology and other places

Healthcare technologies are often considered a solution for better and more efficient dementia care; however, these technologies are frequently abandoned over time. Improving user acceptance is vital to increasing the use of healthcare technology by care professionals, but achieving this attitude change is a complex challenge. Learning Communities provide a form of organized collaboration that can help to accelerate innovation by involving stakeholders from multiple disciplines such as care practice, education, and research. Co-design methods have shown promise for multi-stakeholder involvement, helping them make sense of complexity and leading to new proposals and ideas. This paper showcases how co-design activities in an existing Learning Community were employed to address challenges surrounding the technology acceptance of care professionals in dementia care. Over three sessions, twenty Learning Community members were guided into designing three serious games to discuss, share, and reflect on technology use in dementia care practice. This paper describes the co-design process, demonstrating promise for using co-design activities to create solutions for shared challenges and using gamification to create attitude change in context.

One of the major global challenges of the twenty-first century is the aging population. This is reflected by the growing group of people living with dementia. Even though awareness of dementia is growing, the gap between awareness and understanding still causes stigmatization. This stigma pervades discourse regarding dementia and threatens wellbeing. In this project, an interactive museum installation is built to create awareness and educate people about daily life with dementia. This study investigates how an interactive museum installation contributes to awareness of dementia of the public. During this study, Personal Meaning Maps, field notes, and semi-structured interviews are used to gather data which is analyzed through a thematic analysis. Overall, the exhibition was found to be recognizable from different perspectives, and it was an appropriate form to convey daily life with dementia in a meaningful manner. Each separate aspect of the exhibition contributed differently and evoked emotional responses in participants. The results indicate that the visitor’s awareness is increased.KeywordsDesign for dementiaTangible interactionMultisensory museum installation