Abstract
People with dementia can benefit from listening to music in their everyday lives. Music can bring joy or comfort, it can help to relax or activate, and it can help to maintain one’s identity. Unfortunately, as the dementia progresses, using everyday products becomes more difficult, limiting access to music.
This thesis aims to advance the field of design for dementia. We use ‘access to music’ as a design case to explore how to design for people with dementia, focusing on those with mild to moderate dementia living at home. The research addresses four research questions:
1. What are the needs of people with mild to moderate dementia in relation to listening to music in daily life?
2. Which design principles are available for design in the context of dementia?
3. How to address loss of initiative in design for people with mild to moderate dementia?
4. How can adaptive solutions address the variety in needs and capabilities between different people with dementia, as well as the changing needs within each person?
Chapter 2 identifies a gap in current literature on the music-listening needs of people with dementia. In Chapter 3, we explore related work describing design recommendations in the context of dementia, synthesize them into a set of 10 design principles, and reflect on these principles and how they are interconnected. Chapter 4 examines how to design for loss of initiative in dementia and introduces inviting as a new design principle to address loss of initiative. We demonstrate how this principle can be implemented in a music player and evaluate this music player in the homes of people with dementia. In Chapter 5, we build on this work and introduce adaptivity to better accommodate the dynamics of dementia. We explore how adaptive invitation design can improve access to music for people with dementia. Finally, Chapter 6 reflects on the four research questions and our participatory approach, highlights the main contributions of this thesis, and provides suggestions for future research and design work.
This thesis aims to advance the field of design for dementia. We use ‘access to music’ as a design case to explore how to design for people with dementia, focusing on those with mild to moderate dementia living at home. The research addresses four research questions:
1. What are the needs of people with mild to moderate dementia in relation to listening to music in daily life?
2. Which design principles are available for design in the context of dementia?
3. How to address loss of initiative in design for people with mild to moderate dementia?
4. How can adaptive solutions address the variety in needs and capabilities between different people with dementia, as well as the changing needs within each person?
Chapter 2 identifies a gap in current literature on the music-listening needs of people with dementia. In Chapter 3, we explore related work describing design recommendations in the context of dementia, synthesize them into a set of 10 design principles, and reflect on these principles and how they are interconnected. Chapter 4 examines how to design for loss of initiative in dementia and introduces inviting as a new design principle to address loss of initiative. We demonstrate how this principle can be implemented in a music player and evaluate this music player in the homes of people with dementia. In Chapter 5, we build on this work and introduce adaptivity to better accommodate the dynamics of dementia. We explore how adaptive invitation design can improve access to music for people with dementia. Finally, Chapter 6 reflects on the four research questions and our participatory approach, highlights the main contributions of this thesis, and provides suggestions for future research and design work.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Qualification | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisors/Advisors |
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| Award date | 17 Dec 2024 |
| Place of Publication | Enschede |
| Publisher | |
| Print ISBNs | 978-90-365-6332-1 |
| Electronic ISBNs | 978-90-365-6333-8 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 17 Dec 2024 |
Keywords
- Design
- Dementia
- Music
- Initiative
- Adaptive
- Interaction