Cooking with Dementia

Abstract

People with dementia often quit cooking early on in their illness because it is too complex, tiring, or frustrating. With mild dementia, people struggle with planning and figuring out the order of the cooking steps. Also, they find it challenging to stay focussed on the tasks at hand. Furthermore, their short-term memory causes them to struggle to remember instructions and which steps they have already done.
However, cooking has immense benefits, such as giving a person a sense of autonomy, respect, and purpose and helping bring people closer together. Furthermore, cooking trains cognitive and motoric skills, which allow people with dementia to retain their skills for as long as possible. Currently, there exist recipes designed for people with cognitive impairment, but they do not meet the needs and desires of each individual. In contrast, occupational therapists create individual step-by-step plans, but these require much time and insight. Therefore, this thesis aims to help guide people with mild dementia through a cooking activity at home or at dementia meeting centres in collaboration with other clients or caregivers in a scalable yet personalised way.
Through an iterative approach with extensive involvement of the target group, a new recipe format was developed that suits the needs of people with dementia. The paper recipes use visual elements combined with textual descriptions to optimise understanding and following the recipe. Users navigate through the steps using a pawn to remember which step they are working on, and others can keep track of their progress. Caregivers are best aware of the person with dementia’s instructional needs, cooking habits, and food preferences. Thus, our application Happje enables caregivers to write recipes themselves by writing the steps in a way that suits their client. Happje automatically adds corresponding icons, puts the steps in the correct layout, and helps with exporting or printing the recipe.
The recipe format was evaluated with the intended target group, context, and activity to see whether it helped achieve the design goal. Clients quickly understood the steps through the recipe’s visuals, layout, and step formulation. However, navigating through the steps was more challenging as clients forgot to move the pawn consistently. The collaborative cooking activity was greatly enjoyed by participants and well suited for both families at home and friends at meeting centres. Most (but not all) caregivers appeared capable and motivated to write the recipes.
We recommend improving the navigation of the recipe by redesigning the pawn and adding a digital recipe mode to Happje. We suggest further developing Happje and testing its usability with the target group. Further studies could evaluate how practicing with the recipes could improve following the recipes, collaboration, and trust between caregivers and PwDs.