Mindtraining: Playful Interaction Techniques for People with Dementia
The paper presents the preliminary studies regarding applicable interaction techniques in the field of tablet games for dementia. Serious games in the dementia context are a well-researched topic. However, there is very little knowledge about performing g
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Abstract. The paper presents the preliminary studies regarding applicable interaction techniques in the field of tablet games for dementia. Serious games in the dementia context are a well-researched topic. However, there is very little knowledge about performing gestures and interactions on tablet computers by users suffering from dementia. Since they already encounter many restrictions, a touch interface might be another obstacle. Tablet games often require a different kind of interaction, such as single tap, swipe, or drag and drop. We developed the Android application Mindtraining for dementia patients, which integrates multiple interaction techniques. The purpose of the tablet game is to facilitate an intuitive and efficient usage of gestures for people with early- and middle-stage dementia aged over 65 years. In our study we will investigate how people with dementia perform different gestures and how much help they need each time they use the application. Keywords: Serious games · Dementia · Alzheimer’s disease interaction · Cognitive impairment · Tablet activation
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Introduction
The number of people with dementia, especially Alzheimer’s disease (AD), is increasing and no cure has yet been found [6]. In addition to medicine-based therapies, also non-medicine-based therapies exist to slow down the progress of the disease. Current studies present a meaningful integration of tablet computers, such as iPads, into the therapy context with the aim of benefiting cognitive abilities or acting as trigger for the patient [2,8]. Particularly mobile games show great potential to stimulate dementia patients [1,4]. An advantage of mobile technology is that the hardware is affordable and easy to handle as no external input control (such as a mouse or a keyboard) is needed. Studies often choose children games and educational games for evaluation in the dementia context [1,2]. Although these types of games seem to be easy to use, they still often require too complex interactions or result in a cognitive overload for people with dementia. A major problem is that most technologies are not designed for people with cognitive disabilities and therefore making operating the device very hard to use. c IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2016 Published by Springer International Publishing AG 2016. All Rights Reserved G. Wallner et al. (Eds.): ICEC 2016, LNCS 9926, pp. 223–228, 2016. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-46100-7 21
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E. Hackner and M. Lankes
Many dementia patients, especially people over an age of 65 years, also suffer from visual and/or hearing impairment due to their advanced age. However, mobile applications integrate assistive technologies very infrequently. These applications need to fulfill special requirements to ease the usage for people who are cognitively impaired. Basically, designing for dementia patients means moving back in time and thinking of events that happened in the past of one individual and the respective generation [1]. Metaphors, which are frequently used in mobile applicatio
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