Designing an interface usable by people with dementia

Caring for people with dementia will be one of the major challenges of the 21st century. Advancing technology may offer ways to augment and supplement human care, if it is sensitively designed with the needs of potential users always taken into account. Developing an interface that a person with dementia can make sense of and use is a difficult goal. Beginning to meet this challenge is one aspect of a programme we have embarked on to develop a multi-media system that can be used to help people with dementia communicate better with others. Reminiscence work with people with dementia is a valuable tool for enabling them to participate meaningfully in conversations. We are developing a system which uses multimedia technology as an effective vehicle for delivering reminiscence stimulus and thus conversation support for people with dementia.