title: Co-Designing Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) Environments: Unravelling the Situated Context of Informal Dementia Care.
abstract: Ambient assisted living (AAL) aims to help older persons "age-in-place" and manage everyday activities using intelligent and pervasive computing technology. AAL research, however, has yet to explore how AAL might support or collaborate with informal care partners (ICPs), such as relatives and friends, who play important roles in the lives and care of persons with dementia (PwDs). In a multiphase codesign process with six (6) ICPs, we envisioned how AAL could be situated to complement their care. We used our codesigned "caregiver interface" artefacts as triggers to facilitate envisioning of AAL support and unpack the situated, idiosyncratic context within which AAL aims to assist. Our findings suggest that AAL should be designed to support ICPs in fashioning "do-it-yourself" solutions that complement tacitly improvised care strategies and enable them to try, observe, and adapt to solutions over time. In this way, an ICP could decide which activities to entrust to AAL support, when (i.e., scheduled or spontaneous) and how a system should provide support (i.e., using personalized prompts based on care experience), and when adaptations to system support are needed (i.e., based alerting patterns and queried reports). Future longitudinal work employing participatory, design-oriented methods with care dyads is encouraged.
authors.affiliation: Rehabilitation Sciences Institute and Department of Occupational Sciences & Occupational Therapy, University of Toronto, 160-500 University Avenue, Toronto, ON, Canada M5G 1V7.
authors.forename: Amy S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Hwang
authors.affiliation: Department of Software and Information Systems, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Boulevard, Charlotte, NC 28223, USA.
authors.forename: Khai N
authors.initials: KN
authors.lastname: Truong
authors.affiliation: Rehabilitation Sciences Institute and Department of Occupational Sciences & Occupational Therapy, University of Toronto, 160-500 University Avenue, Toronto, ON, Canada M5G 1V7.
authors.forename: Jill I
authors.initials: JI
authors.lastname: Cameron
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Division of Occupational Therapy, Karolinska Institutet, 141 83 Huddinge, Sweden.
authors.forename: Eva
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Lindqvist
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Division of Occupational Therapy, Karolinska Institutet, 141 83 Huddinge, Sweden.
authors.forename: Louise
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Nygård
authors.affiliation: Rehabilitation Sciences Institute and Department of Occupational Sciences & Occupational Therapy, University of Toronto, 160-500 University Avenue, Toronto, ON, Canada M5G 1V7.
authors.forename: Alex
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mihailidis
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D040561:Assisted Living Facilities; D003704:Dementia / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D005791:Patient Care