It is known that physical training can help people with Alzheimer’s disease to
show less physical limitations and better motoric skills (Neeper et al. 1995).
Physical rehabilitation and exercises are included in the services offered by
most eldercare organizations. In the CRISP project (ten Bhömer et al. 2012)
we are developing new services for rehabilitation of people with dementia,
with a focus on the combination of textiles and technology. In a workshop
setting we used interactive prototypes to discuss the implications of embedding
these new services in the existing services of the eldercare professionals.
The prototypes helped to envision new scenarios and additional touchpoints
necessary to implement the new service. Further, the different viewpoints of
the eldercare professionals triggered new possibilities for the prototypes in
different contexts with different target users.
Figure 1: The workshop setting Figure 2: Future service by one of the participants
During the workshop, a design researcher, two therapists and a care manager
evaluated two prototypes (Figure 1). The first one was a shirt that design to
make rehabilitation exercises more fun by using sound feedback, for people
with early and moderate dementia. The second one was a blanket with
integrated vibration elements that reacts on touch and is used to trigger new
communication patterns between a person with severe dementia and another
person (partner, family or caregiver). The workshop followed the phases of coreflection
(Tomico et al. 2009) and consisted of a reflection part, in which positives
and negatives about the current prototypes where written down. During
the ideation part these were used as input to let the participants envision
and sketch out their future service (Figure 2). In the confrontation this future
service was brought back to reality by creating a requirements list for the next
iteration of the prototypes, and a concrete plan to test the prototypes with the
indented user group to validate some of the assumptions.
D4H2013
show less physical limitations and better motoric skills (Neeper et al. 1995).
Physical rehabilitation and exercises are included in the services offered by
most eldercare organizations. In the CRISP project (ten Bhömer et al. 2012)
we are developing new services for rehabilitation of people with dementia,
with a focus on the combination of textiles and technology. In a workshop
setting we used interactive prototypes to discuss the implications of embedding
these new services in the existing services of the eldercare professionals.
The prototypes helped to envision new scenarios and additional touchpoints
necessary to implement the new service. Further, the different viewpoints of
the eldercare professionals triggered new possibilities for the prototypes in
different contexts with different target users.
Figure 1: The workshop setting Figure 2: Future service by one of the participants
During the workshop, a design researcher, two therapists and a care manager
evaluated two prototypes (Figure 1). The first one was a shirt that design to
make rehabilitation exercises more fun by using sound feedback, for people
with early and moderate dementia. The second one was a blanket with
integrated vibration elements that reacts on touch and is used to trigger new
communication patterns between a person with severe dementia and another
person (partner, family or caregiver). The workshop followed the phases of coreflection
(Tomico et al. 2009) and consisted of a reflection part, in which positives
and negatives about the current prototypes where written down. During
the ideation part these were used as input to let the participants envision
and sketch out their future service (Figure 2). In the confrontation this future
service was brought back to reality by creating a requirements list for the next
iteration of the prototypes, and a concrete plan to test the prototypes with the
indented user group to validate some of the assumptions.
D4H2013
