Applied human informatics (AHI)
Open Journal of the Academy of Human Informatics (ISSN 2433-2372)

Vol.4 (2022) No.1 p.1-18 prev. | next
Special Issue on Intelligent Environments for Health and Well-being
10.14865/ahi.4.1.1
Article
Developing an Intelligent Environment to Support People with Early-Stage Dementia: from User-Needs to a Real-Life Prototype
Anne GRAVE1) Saskia ROBBEN2) Michel OEY2) Somaya BEN ALLOUCH2,4) Masi MOHAMMADI1,3)
1) Smart Architectural Technologies, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. a.j.j.grave@tue.nl
2) Digital Life, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
3) Architecture in Health, HAN University of Applied Sciences, Arnhem, The Netherlands
4) Informatics Institute, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Received: Oct. 8 2021; Revised: Jan. 25 2022; Accepted: Feb. 22 2022
Keywords: intelligent environments, dementia, ambient assisted living, ubiquitous compu-ting, pervasive computing, elderly, healthcare
Abstract
Intelligent environments can offer support to people with early-stage dementia, who often experience problems with maintaining their circadian rhythm. The fo-cus of this work is developing a prototype of an Intelligent Environment for as-sisting these people with their daily rhythm while living independently at home. Following the four phases of the Empathic Design Framework (Explore, Trans-late, Process, and Validate), the needs of people with dementia and their caregiv-ers were incorporated into the design. In the exploration phase, a need assessment took place using focus groups (N=12), observations (N=10), and expert inter-views (N=27). Then, to determine the requirements for a prototype of an intelli-gent environment, the second phase, Translate, used three co-creation sessions with different stakeholder groups. In these sessions, Mind Maps (N=55) and Idea Generation Cards (N=35) were used. These resulted in a set of 10 require-ments on the following topics: context-awareness, pattern recognition, adaptation, support, personalization, autonomy, modularity, dementia proof interaction, costs, data, and privacy. Finally, in the third phase, the requirements were applied to a real-life prototype by a multidisciplinary design team of researchers, (E-Health) tech companies, designers, software engineers with representatives of eight or-ganizations. The prototype serves as a basis for further development of Intelligent Environments to enable people with dementia to live longer independently at home.
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