Mid-term report DPM 82 A new light on dementia
Tom van ‘t Westei n de s104815 coach: Wi na smeenk
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Table of content
p ressure cooker
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First client meeti ng
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benchmark i ng
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field research I
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p roject focus
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dementia workshop
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field research II
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secon d client meeti ng
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themeday
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what’s is next
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P ressure cooker A pressure cooker always works for me to get in the working mode while diving into the subject. Starting with collaborative research resulted in the first basic insights in dementia and light. We quickly went through scientific research on hormones, lumen and day/night rhythms. For myself I found out that I was not so attracted by the idea of designing for light therapy. I felt limited by the fixed possibilities so with further research I focuses on stimulating a brain healthy lifestyle by active and social support. Together we continued with a post-it brainstorm to gather all the information, shape the subject and come up with random ideas. To continue I picked one of my own random ideas to work out together with my gathered background information. I started visualizing my concept with drawings and tangible pictures. I underpinned my way of thinking with the earlier research and made certain assumptions. Furthermore I wanted to implement technology so I made a quick prototype to make my intentions more clear. To close up I made a presentation that showed why I made certain choices and assumptions. The pressure cooker became an active and stimulating introduction to dementia. It gave shape to my way of thinking and my interests.
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With the concept of ‘familiar family’ I integrated my research on stimulating social interaction. The piece of jewelry in combination with a photo book could help dementia patients remember their closest family, friends and caregivers for a longer time. By triggering their memory through a light the concept can improve the self-esteem of the dementia patient.
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First client meeti ng The first intention of the meeting for me was, besides presenting our concepts, to see what the contribution of these people was to my project and development for upcoming semester. I wanted to see how these professionals the saw the collaboration with us as designers, and what our value could be for them. With giving the presentation I felt like introducing our steps of thinking. We presented our results and our clear view on the division between all the light therapy and affecting mood parts of helping people with dementia. In this way they knew in what directions we were heading and I could find out what their thoughts and expertise were on these directions. Besides the information they presented in their personal introduction I could understand their way of thinking out of their comments they gave on our pressure-cooker concepts. As expected there were some question marks with the concept of using light
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to help remember family members. It is hard to proof if you can make people with dementia learn something, even you start with it in an early stage like right after the diagnosis. Besides that it is not excluded that the light that is used to remember the family members has another negative effect on these mentally ill people. For example it is known that the color red is related to agitation, increased hart rate, respiration and brain-wave activity, while blue is known as a relaxing color. All this would be brought to an artifact where people are not familiar with. It is determined that it is hard for people with dementia to integrate new objects or services in their daily lives once they are in a certain stage of the disease. To sum up these comments I suggested to take a step back to the essence of the idea. They recommended to focus on reminiscence as a basis of this direction that helps me to focus on a small part of the degradation process.
It turned out that these people are fully prepared to help us and see the potential of me as a designer to help people with dementia of their caregivers. They will help to provide us with the necessary means to come in touch with caregivers since they also see that this is the best way for us to experience how it is to have dementia and in what way we can contribute to making their lives a little bit easier.
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Benchmark i ng With doing a benchmark I wanted to see what product there are on the market that fit to my field of interest. For dementia patients there is a wide range of products that vary from very simple reminding methods to complete domestic monitoring. I categorized my findings to give my way of thinking a direction. With the three categories ‘prompts & reminders’ ‘communication’ and ‘leisure’ I limited the assistive means. In each category I placed several products that could positively contribute to a daily situation. I found out for myself that the category of ‘leisure’ was of most value for me. Based on earlier research and personal interest I choose six products that had the most interesting aspects. I
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did some extra research for those products and came to the insight that reminiscence was an overall aspect in these aids. All together the benchmark helped getting a more clear direction in my project. It was an extra conformation for me that I did not have to design something purely based on light therapy theories.
Field research I Meeting my target group is very important if I want to get a grasp on their way of thinking, behavior and daily activities. Therefore I visited care home ‘Vitalis Vonderhof ’ in Eindhoven. This gave me the opportunity to observe dementia patient in different phases of the disease and the connection with their caregivers. I started the day with reminding the people who did not go to the morning gymnastics that they were invited to drink coffee and read the paper together. I noticed that some patients denied that they forgot to go to the gym and others were too stubborn to go. Richard, the caregiver who guided me, made clear that every patient evolves different during the process and everyone needs a different approach. Gathering the elderly around the coffee took a lot of effort and patience. Once everyone was enjoying a cup of coffee Richard started to read the articles out loud.
I found out that this way of sharing information triggered memories from long time ago. This trigger resulted in a tangle of stories in which everyone wanted to point out their own experiences. The subjects varied from sexual abuse in the church, which provoked emotional reactions, to the criminal past of one of the patients. Their stories were linked to recent events and many elderly wanted to share their opinion. I connected this experience to my earlier research on reminiscence and active social support as an extra validation. Furthermore Richard told me about the different approach of the care home. They focus on a very personal way of providing care while stimulating an active life by organizing all kinds of intern and extern activities. All together the few hours showed me the importance of active and social stimulation in a personal and conversational context.
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p roject focus With all input from my previous experiences I wanted to make an overview of my exact project focus. Based on the goal of the project and research input I made a list of keywords that became a checklist for my future concepts. The pie chart shows the four stimulation fields that I wanted to focus on and their relationship to each other. In order to help the dementia patient I limited myself to four different forms of support; social care network-, activity-, memoryand visual support. These directions became the basis for the three concepts that were later presented to the client.
DEMENTIA PROGESSIVE DISEASE 1
A NEW LIGHT ON DEMENTIA
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FOCUS ON THESE STAGES
GOAL:
HELPING PEOPLE WITH DEMENTIA TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF LIFE IN THEIR HOME ENVIRONMENT.
VISUAL PROBLEMS DAILY ACTIVITY
SOCIAL ACTIVITY
10% 20%
45% 25%
AMNESIA
SOCIAL CARE NETWORK SUPPORT
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12-03-2013
DPM82 TOM VAN ‘T WESTEINDE
IN 4 PHASES 3
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PROJECT FOCUS/DIRECTION
ACTIVITY SUPPORT
KEYWORDS: SELF-ESTEEM, ATTACHMENT, SELF-IMAGE, SOCIAL RELATIONS, ENJOYMENT OF ACTIVITIES, LEARNING CURVE, HOME ENVIRONMENT, INDEPENDENCE, STIMULATION.
MEMORY SUPPORT
VISUAL SUPPORT
Dementia workshop Without any expectations I began on the workshop dementia together with the students from the Fontys. I had to found out what the value of the other HBO students could be for me. I wanted the workshop to be a valuable addition to my project so I had to steer it in my way of thinking. While brainstorming I pointed out that there were not many opportunities with light therapy and with that I pushed into the direction of my interests. The mixed group of students came up with all different kinds of background knowledge and experiences. For me it was also a moment of refreshment since all the gained knowledge from the research came up while thinking of situations in where we saw possibilities. After the first brainstorms I connected all my insights to the input of the other students. This slowly turned into the learning-phase / trigger-phase direction which would become essential for my further progress. With this direction in mind I developed the concept of a game that first could be created, in the first phase, and later could be played, in the second phase. The direct feedback from the other students and from the experts walking around was for me very valuable in forming the concept. A short presentation at the end captured our solutions with argumentation and through a quick and dirty prototype we supported and visualized our idea. All together the workshop was a refreshing and valuable addition that helped me in getting a clear view on where I was in my project. The expertise of other students and other professionals contributed positively to my progress. I was able to continue my project with new input and positive empathy
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field research II The second day of field necessary was necessary to gain more experience with the target group. This time it was not at a care home but at a daycare. This is more in line with my project direction since my concept direction are based on social day activities. The first people I met were in the 65+ section. It became clear that some patients are in a stubborn form of denial and only can be pick on one another. When the day activities started I joined the memory-training session in the 65- section. I had the possibility to ask questions whereby I found out that most people still remember things from long ago and still like to talk about that with their children and grand-children. Unfortunately I also found out that simple games whereby they have to come up with an animal is already too difficult. The next person already forgot what the person before him of her said. However I noticed that with a game about the historical and cultural facts about the province they are performing much better. During the lunch I was able to observe the dementia patients and talk with them.
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While playing old LPs I wanted to see if I could trigger certain memories with the colorful covers and song titles. For some visitors the covers were very useful and others had to listen to the music before they remembered the song and/or artist. One visitors was not able to normally communicate with others but as soon as she heard a familiar lyrics she could sing along. For the afternoon activity I joined an 65+ group of men who had music therapy. This confronted me with the childish behavior of dementia patients but also made me realize with how little you can make these people happy. They get fulfillment out of playing and singing the same songs every week. This day confirmed the potential of my concepts and my way of thinking. It helped preparing for my client meeting and narrowing down my focus.
secon d client meeti ng The presentation at the GGzE had to become my mid-term feedback moment. Since I would be presenting for a group of experts from the GGzE, the municipality and the University, including my coach and the PhD student, this had to become an important moment in my project. For me it started as a recapitulation of my activities in the first four weeks of the project. While I was setting up the presentation I went through all the steps I made and the information I gathered during these steps. The presentation became a chronological timeline of my progress while the choices I made became visible. By doing this I was able to form three clear directions including the one from the workshop. I substantiated my choices with personal motivation, experiences and feedback from earlier meetings and other experts. I supported the two most confident directions with two concepts for which I wanted to receive feedback. The overarching idea for these concepts was based on the learning/trigger theory I retrieved from the workshop. The feedback from the experts was very well funded
and they motivated their preferences. The potency was acknowledged which confirmed my way of thinking. For me the connection between the two concept became visible which resulted in a melted abstraction. Furthermore the learning/trigger theory was very well received and translated into a co-creation/sharing theory that would become the base of my further progress. It became clear that I had reached a focus point and I was now ready to broaden my view on one concept. The presentation resulted in a gathering of all the loose ends that together formed the realization of my progress at that moment.
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Theme day With the theme day presentation I hoped to get an extra confirmation on my concept since the presentation at the GGzE. In the two weeks after that presentation I managed to get things clear by visualizing the important aspect of my concept. Besides that I also needed new input to continue after the SDL-weeks. In the short presentation I tried to quickly explain why I made certain choices and what shaped my concept. With physical objects I tried to make everything more clear. This was
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also a mean to get a grasp on the how and what of my thoughts. The feedback that I received was partly focused on the realization of the concept, which was exactly what I needed. I stated about the personal and widespread aspects of the concept and I got feedback on the implementation; should it become a game or a toolbox? Furthermore they pointed out the social and trigger aspects. I already gave most of the comments a thought, but the presentation was too short to give an extensive description.
What’s next For the persecution of my project I have to focus on the playfulness to elaborate my concept. I have to create a 360 degree view around a user. With that user and its family I have to map the needs and requirements that are needed to work out the concept. After these co-creations I can zoom out and generalize these requirements into a concrete form. With that I have to know what I want to achieve at the end of the semester. Through experimenting with physical objects I need to get value out of the cocreations and plan well when I want to produce a final product. Furthermore I need to validate my concept thoughts with some scientific sources since they are now only based on experiences.
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