Are elderly sufferers of dementia able to play a reminiscence game on a tablet device independently?

As the old population is growing older, a huge need for increased health care is needed, and the time per patient may be decreased in the future because of an increased carer burden. Many of the elderly develop some sort of dementia when growing older. In Norway 70 000 people already suffers from this syndrome. However, reminiscence is considered the process of thinking or telling others about one’s past experiences, and may probably delay the aggravation of these peoples’ cognitive function and dementia symptoms. In this thesis a mobile reminiscence game was developed using a strong user centered design process with five patients suffering from dementia and an expert mini-focus group. The intention was to make the game assist the patients while playing questions from the past, by giving automated instructions and feedback to the user while playing. Several usability issues regarded with the reminiscence game were revealed during this process, to suit the patients’ different physical and mental skills. An observational study was conducted in the end to observe a selected group of patients’ suffering from dementia ability to play the game independently. This study found 21 of 40 given questions (52,5%) to be answered totally independent by the users. The results found the users to play more independently as they progressed in the game. The results also discovered individual differences among the users, in terms of playing independently