Dementia, Design and Technology. Time to get involved.

The interest for the design of life environments for persons with dementia is growing stronger among architects, engineers, social scientists and those responsible for housing and health care planning. This development is connected to the enlarged group of people that become afflicted by this disease and to the fact that a safe environment is proved to be very important for their well-being as well as for their relatives and carers. Dementia is a progressive syndrome and the risk increases by age. Since there is no cure for this disease what we can do is to improve their life situation. It is often called the disease of the relatives because it deeply effects relations and daily life. It is also a disease that the individual has to live with. Most often the meaning of daily routines and the use of common technical applications and services changes dramatically. Efforts are made to design housing for persons with dementia and systems to support their carers. Technologies and a variety of aids is expected to help in developing efficiency of these services, supporting family carers and providing solutions for independent living and improved quality of life of persons with dementia. So far, persons with dementia have not been involved in most of the design processes. Their voice has been used by their informal or formal carers or dementia experts. As a consequence most solutions available are focusing mainly on safety and needs of the carers while other needs and possibilities are mainly neglected. Published result confirms that the lack of user involvement did not facilitate the use of common applications, nor assistive technologies. The aim of this book is to increase the understanding of subjective needs of people with dementia and the way this understanding can promote and improve their involvement in design processes. We will present examples of design and design interventions where people with dementia are involved and what is required from technology when the user has an illness causing dementia. Because of the fact that approaches to involve people with dementia in design as active users of technology are still quite novel, we will also discuss ethical issues and challenging experiences gathered in our studies. The authors represent on-going design and research in Scandinavia and United Kingdom