| Sumario: | Purpose Within the project 'In Touch'; touch screen application for people with dementia, a concept happy game was designed for the iPad. The purpose of this happy game is to provide a meaningful individual activity for persons with dementia, to give pleasure, and to create a sense of self-achievement. Method A Bachelor student of Communication and Multimedia Design1 started with a literature review about the quality of life of people with dementia, which provided insights for the design process. As technology should address the needs of people with dementia, the REAFF-framework2 was used in the design process as well. This framework contains four principles to guide the development of technological solutions: Responding; Enabling; Augmenting; and Failure-Free. Based on these principles, literature reviews, and former practical research, a number of requirements were formulated, including technical requirements, design requirements and functionalities of the concept game. The student visited a day care center and nursing home for people with dementia and observed patients with moderate or mid-stage Alzheimer's disease. To acquaint herself with their behavior, she sat with them and had short conversations about photographs and about things they liked to do. With some patients, she played with commercially available apps on the iPad or did other simple activities, like coloring a picture together. These activities contributed to her understanding of people with dementia, according to the first step of the Extended User Design Circle: Understand3. Before we begin to design an app to help dementia patients, it is important to understand its intended users. Based on the student's observations and the results of an earlier study that explored the interests of people with dementia, the student chose the subject 'pets' for the game concept. In the next step, she tested a style of the picture game with fifteen patients with dementia. Patients preferred realistic pictures, especially photographs, over simple pictures or cartoons. This enabled us to design game graphics. The student made her expectations of how a happy game with a dog could be played, explicit and tested these expectations in a prototype version with twelve patients. This included touching buttons and/or objects on the screen, what stimuli might encourage the patient to touch the screen, what actions of the dog were preferred, if other pets (cat and bird) evoked similar reactions and the actual playing. The prototype was only tested once with each person. Results & Discussion A prototype of this game was played by nine patients with dementia, seven of whom reported enjoying the game. Three other patients had only looked at the game; two of them seemed happy watching the game being demonstrated. From the test results, a more precise set of requirements was formulated for further development of the app. Looking back at the REAFF-framework, this game responds to people's desire to take care of something; it enables people with dementia to act independently; it provides augmented reality; and the player cannot fail the game. Understanding the special needs, preferences, and abilities of people with dementia by spending time with them throughout the design process, including testing design choices, has proven successful.
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