Co-Designing Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) Environments: Unravelling the Situated Context of Informal Dementia Care.

Amy S Hwang,Khai N Truong,Jill I Cameron,Louise Nygård,Eva Lindqvist,Alex Mihailidis

doi:10.1155/2015/720483

Abstract

Ambient assisted living (AAL) aims to help older persons “age-in-place” and manage everyday activities using intelligent and pervasive computing technology. AAL research, however, has yet to explore how AAL might support or collaborate with informal care partners (ICPs), such as relatives and friends, who play important roles in the lives and care of persons with dementia (PwDs). In a multiphase codesign process with six (6) ICPs, we envisioned how AAL could be situated to complement their care. We used our codesigned “caregiver interface” artefacts as triggers to facilitate envisioning of AAL support and unpack the situated, idiosyncratic context within which AAL aims to assist. Our findings suggest that AAL should be designed to support ICPs in fashioning “do-it-yourself” solutions that complement tacitly improvised care strategies and enable them to try, observe, and adapt to solutions over time. In this way, an ICP could decide which activities to entrust to AAL support, when (i.e., scheduled or spontaneous) and how a system should provide support (i.e., using personalized prompts based on care experience), and when adaptations to system support are needed (i.e., based alerting patterns and queried reports). Future longitudinal work employing participatory, design-oriented methods with care dyads is encouraged.

Highlights

As the most important contributors to dependence and institutionalization, dementia and cognitive impairment [1] profoundly impact persons living with impairment, and their significant others, relatives, and friends
This study extends our earlier discussion of the design considerations for this context [24] to a deeper description of how informal care partners (ICPs) envision Ambient assisted living (AAL) support alongside their own care of PwDs
We address our second research objective by describing how participants envisioned specifying and obtaining the desired support—by setting up and orientating the AAL system to persons and the home setting; by specifying and personalizing how the system would assist their relatives (PwDs) in activities; by scheduling and spontaneously requesting system support; and by retrieving from the system care-related information and using the system to “check up” on PwDs if and when left home unattended

Summary

Introduction

As the most important contributors to dependence and institutionalization, dementia and cognitive impairment [1] profoundly impact persons living with impairment, and their significant others, relatives, and friends. While public health systems strive to assist persons with dementia (PwDs) to live at home [2], Canadian home care resources continue to fall short in meeting real-world needs [3], shifting care responsibilities to informal care partners (ICPs)—most commonly family members [4]. The role of an ICP involves responding to increasing care needs and dependency over time. There is a need for policies, services, and interventions that can better support and collaborate with ICPs in the care of PwDs [3, 13]

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Conclusion