Smart Homes Design for People with Dementia

Abstract

In this paper, we present a user-centred approach for designing and developing smart homes for people with dementia. In contrast to most of the existing literature related to dementia, the present approach aims at tailoring the system to the specific needs of dementia using a scenario-based methodology. Scenarios are based on typical dementia symptoms which are collected from research literatures and validated by dementia caregivers. They portray the common behaviour of people with dementia. Because they explain real-world situations, scenarios are meant to generalise the requirements of smart homes for people with dementia. Hence, a top-down approach is followed to summarise the content of the scenarios into the essential requirements for smart home frameworks dedicated to monitoring people with dementia.