Fourteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

Sensory focused activity for people with dementia is limited in Hong Kong due to a lack of human resources and space. As the population with dementia is growing rapidly, innovative design solutions are necessary to address the shortage of dementia care. The design researchers co-designed sensory book with HK SKH Lok Man Alice Kwok Integrated Service Centre, an elderly community centre in Hong Kong. The aim of the research is to allow sensory-focused activity for people with dementia to be disseminated to a larger population and also enrich the quality of life for people with dementia. This paper describes the co-design process of Sensory book, created in collaboration with 8 dementia care professionals and 2 engineers. Sensory book is a personalized interactive activity tool, consisting of an electronic fabric book and a mobile app, designed for people with dementia who need meaningful interaction with family members or informal caregivers through activity in domestic settings. The sensory book has adjustable activity difficulty, activity guidelines, and tracks activity performance. The co-design process of sensory book consisted of the stages of interviews, the rapid ideation and rapid prototyping workshops with the 7 social workers and an occupational therapist to gather data for the development of the sensory book. This research project enriches the quality of life for people with dementia by creating a sensory focused activity tool with meaningful associations.