Ambient displays to assist caregivers monitoring the sleep of people with dementia

Abstract

Ambient displays provide peripheral awareness of an event or situation of importance, but not critical. One such situation is monitoring the sleep of people with dementia (PwD). They frequently exhibit problematic behaviors at night, such as waking up often or wandering, which cause significant burden to caregivers. In this paper we propose the use of ambient displays for caregivers in a geriatric residence to be aware of the sleep of PwD. We report the results of a user study conducted in a geriatric residence to determine potential applications of ambient displays. From an ethnographic analysis of the data gathered in the study we derive design insights and application scenarios. We validated these results with caregivers who work in two geriatric residences.