Designing for Everyday Sounds at Home with People with Dementia and their Partners

Abstract

People with dementia and their caregivers aging in place have expressed the need for social, emotional, and recreational interventions at home. Listening to everyday sounds evokes memories and provides conversational cues to support social relations and elicit emotional responses for people with dementia. However, research has yet to explore how these meaningful experiences can be transferred into home settings. This paper presents the insights from our co-design study that involved three people with dementia and their partners in developing an interactive sound player for listening to everyday sounds at home. We report on the motivations of people with dementia and their caregivers to engage in meaningful sound-based activities at home and present the Tumbler as a prototype to foster initiative and agency in exploring familiar everyday sounds. We present design implications of how sound can enrich the everyday experiences of dementia by facilitating social and pleasurable moments at home.