Supporting stimulation needs in dementia care through wall-sized displays

Sas, Corina and Davies, Nigel and Clinch, Sarah and Shaw, Peter and Mikusz, Mateusz and Steeds, Madeleine and Nohrer, Lukas (2020) Supporting stimulation needs in dementia care through wall-sized displays. In: CHI '20: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems :. ACM, pp. 1-16. ISBN 9781450367080

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Abstract

Beside reminiscing, the increasing cognitive decline in dementia can also be addressed through sensory stimulation allowing the immediate, nonverbal engagement with the world through one’s senses. Much HCI work has prioritized cognitive stimulation for reminiscing or personhood often on small screens, while less research has explored sensory stimulation like the one enabled by large displays. We describe a year-long deployment in a residential care home of a wall-sized display, and explored its domestication through 24 contextual interviews. Findings indicate strong engagement and attachment to the display which has inspired four psychosocial interventions using online generic content. We discuss the value of these findings for personhood through residents’ exercise of choices, the tension between generic/personal content and its public/private use, the importance of participatory research approach to domestication, and the infrastructure-based prototype, illustrated by the DementiaWall and its generative quality.