Enabling Positive Moments to People in the Last Stages of Dementia

Abstract

The aim of this thesis was to enable people in the last stage of dementia, that are confined to their bed or room, and the people around them with shared positive moments. In order to design an experimental concept proposal that could accomplish that aim, the emotional needs of people living with dementia and the people around them were explored. Research activities consisting of a literature review, documentaries review and conducting interviews were conducted to generate understanding of the context. Analysing the findings from these activities resulted in identifying the emotional needs and an overview was presented in a stakeholder journey map. It was discovered that due to dementia, people start to live in another ‘inner past world’ that looks a lot like the past. This causes a lot of anxiety to people living with dementia. It was revealed that by bringing back their personal memories from the past, people living with dementia are able to get out of their “inner past world’ and get back to the actual world. This causes them to feel at ease and happy. These personal memories are part of their identity, so focussing on their identity is very crucial in reducing their anxiety. However, bringing back memory events is not easy for people living with dementia. In the last phase, people living with dementia are only able to communicate when their senses are activated. Stimulating their senses is essential for them to connect with their identity and thus to get that at ease and happy feeling. From these insights the following design goal was formulated: “Making the Person living with Dementia to feel at ease by giving them the ability to reconnect with their identity and interests.” From this design goal and the findings in the analysis, a concept direction was driven. The concept direction describes that the concept consists of three parts: an input, an internal part and an output. The different parts are connected to each other over time. The concept starts with an input where the identity of the person living with dementia is explored with a tool, specifically focussing on personal experiences. The information gained during the input will be internally turned into sensory elements that are placed in the output’s part of the concept. When people living with dementia are in the last stage of dementia the concept’s output can stimulate them with the identity events gathered during the input. By presenting this output with sensory stimulation, people living with dementia are able to connect with the event. The concept direction was the foundation of the exploration during ideation. By combining findings from different ideation activities, ideas on how the input and the output of the concept could possibly look like were generated. The input of the concept should be in the shape of an interview with assignments. The person living with dementia should be supported during this interview by a family member/ the informal caregiver. The interview focuses on gaining information about the background and general likes, but goes deeper into activities that they enjoyed while aged 15 to 25 years old. The output of the concept should focus on stimulating as many senses as possible. Therefore the output consists of a digital element for visual and auditory stimulation and of a physical element for tactile and olfactory stimulation. These decisions were summarized in the concept’s scenario. The scenario was used to evaluate the feasibility of the concept. According to the addressed experts, the concept is very feasible. This is due to the fact that the concept stimulates the senses of people living with dementia to reconnect them with their most memorable memories. In order to clarify what the presented output could look like, examples from multi sensory environments were presented. The elements used in multi sensory environments can be used in the output of the concept, but in a personalised way. Also in comparison to the multi sensory environment, the concept’s output should be an experience brought to the person, instead of bringing the person to the experience. Based on the validation, it could be concluded that the proposed concept could serve as a base to further develop, test and research the possibilities of personalised multi sensory stimulation within the private room environment.