MinD — Designing for People with Dementia: designing for mindful self-empowerment and social engagement

Results in brief

Designing for People with Dementia: designing for mindful self-empowerment and social engagement

MinD aims to help people living with dementia (PwD) engage in social contexts to improve psychosocial wellbeing. PwD often face cognitive, behavioural and psychosocial difficulties, including memory impairment/degeneration and perceived loss of identity. This can cause difficulties recognizing, relating to and empathising with other people, which affects social engagement and quality of life. MinD investigated how design can complement existing care approaches in novel ways, using mindfulness to empower PwD in everyday social situations. It focused on personal difficulties with, and environmental influences on social engagement. We explored how mindful design can help develop innovative solutions that help PwD enhance perceptions of identity, confidence and agency through meaningful social engagement, mindful reflection and decision-making. Objectives: 1) investigate challenges/opportunities to increase PwDs’ subjective wellbeing and social engagement through mindful design; 2) develop mindful co-design approaches to empower PwD to express their needs and challenges during the design process; 3) develop a mindful design approach to developing product solutions to empower PwD to engage socially; 4) investigate/test the conceptual and technical development of tangible mindful design solutions (personal/environmental), supportive of personal wellbeing and social inclusion within dementia care; 5) develop a holistic model of mindful design-integrated dementia care re social engagement challenges/opportunities. Outcomes: 1) new design uses to help PwD engage socially and improve subjective wellbeing; 2) robust methodological co-design framework for design development and evaluation with PwD; 3) holistic mindful model of designing for mindful care for PwD; 4) policy recommendations to include design in dementia care.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

This project aims to help people with dementia engage in social contexts to improve psychosocial wellbeing. People who are affected by Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias often face cognitive, behavioural and psychosocial difficulties, including impairment and degeneration of memory and of perceptions of identity. In a social context, this can cause difficulties of recognizing, relating to and empathising with other people. These difficulties often pose a challenge for engaging socially, reinforcing their effects and reducing personal well-being. Design can offer novel ways of complementing existing care approaches to empower people with dementia in everyday social situations. Utilising the concept of mindful design, we will investigate innovative design solutions to enable self-empowerment and confidence building of people living with dementia. We will specifically focus on two areas: personal difficulties with social interaction and environmental influences on social engagement. In these two contexts, we will study how personal, wearable designs can help mediate perceptions of identity and emotion management; and how environmental aspects can reduce feelings of information overload and instill feelings of self-empowerment and control.The outcomes and benefits of the project will include: the development of new uses of design for helping people with dementia to engage socially and improve subjective well-being; the presentation of a robust methodological co-design framework for the development and evaluation of the designs in dementia care settings; the development of a holistic mindful model of designing and of a model for mindful care for social engagement for people with dementia; policy recommendations for the inclusion of design within dementia care.This groundbreaking project will be enabled through an innovative consortium of academic and non-academic partners that combines research in product and environmental design, ICT, and dementia care.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

UNIVERSITY OF WOLVERHAMPTON · WolverhamptonCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
ALEXIANER ST. HEDWIG KLINIKEN BERLIN GMBH · BERLINGermany
ALZHEIMER EUROPE · SENNINGERBERGLuxembourg
DU IT SOCIETA A RESPONSABILITA LIMITATA · FIRENZEItaly
ETIC LAB LLP · NEWTOWNUnited Kingdom
FREDERICK UNIVERSITY FU · PALLOURIOTISSA LEFKOSIACyprus
FUNDACIO EURECAT · Cerdanyola Del Valles (Barcelona)Spain
FUNDACION INTRAS · ValladolidSpain
ITMO UNIVERSITY · ST PETERSBURGRussia
NOTTINGHAMSHIRE HEALTHCARE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST · NOTTINGHAMUnited Kingdom
PANTON BV · DeventerNetherlands
PIBARQUITECTURASIX SLP · BARCELONASpain
QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY - QLD QUT · BrisbaneAustralia
STICHTING ZORGGROEP SINT MAARTEN · DENEKAMPNetherlands
TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAET DRESDEN · DresdenGermany
THE MANCHESTER METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY · MANCHESTERUnited Kingdom
UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE CATALUNYA · BARCELONASpain
UNIVERSITE DU LUXEMBOURG · ESCH-SUR-ALZETTELuxembourg
UNIVERSITEIT TWENTE · EnschedeNetherlands

MinD · Designing for People with Dementia: designing for mindful self-empowerment and social engagement

Results in brief

Designing for People with Dementia: designing for mindful self-empowerment and social engagement

Project objective

Participants

Links