Integrating Daily Rituals into the Design of Assistive Technologies for People with Dementia

Dementia is a family of diseases which cause cognitive impairments and impede the engagement in everyday activities. For people living with dementia (PwD), technologies can facilitate the process of engaging in these daily activities. However, many of these technologies are poorly adopted by PwD, as they are often designed without their input or involvement. This thesis aims to understand daily rituals and map those rituals into the design of technologies. This thesis uses Human-Centered Design (HCD) approaches, such as contextual inquiry, to understand daily rituals for PwD and identify ways to integrate rituals into technology design. Research data was collected through semi-structured interviews with 14 participants (8 informal caregivers and 6 people living with dementia). The interview data was then analyzed in ATLASTi to generate insights informing the design and development of several prototype iterations.