Designing Sentic: Participatory Design with People Living with Dementia

The number of people living with dementia is increasing rapidly and puts pressure on our society. An increasing body of evidence suggests that listening to music and engaging with systems that allow you to do this can be beneficial in dementia care. Building on a growing interest in HCI for designing technology for dementia, this chapter will focus on how to provide people with dementia personal and direct access to a music system. This paper presents the design process of Sentic, a music player with an interface that can be tailored to fit its users’ needs. An interface can be selected that suitably matches with the capabilities of people living with dementia. The design is the result of using a participatory design approach. A strategy of adaptation was found to be the most appropriate in designing for people living with dementia. This chapter shows the potential of tailoring interactions so that they support and maintain autonomy and facilitate personal access to technology, for people with dementia, and offers considerations and opportunities for future design and research.