With an increasing amount of work within HCI targeting people who have dementia, it is important to understand the ways that various factors influence the technology that is designed for people with dementia, and the way individuals adopt and use (or don’t use) this technology. A nuanced understanding of this is especially important given the ethical and logistical issues of designing for and with a population that still faces significant marginalization, and who (along with family, carers, and clinicians) are managing a condition as complex as dementia. This two-day workshop at CHI 2017 aims to bring together HCI researchers and members from the dementia care community, to explore three subthemes of cross-cultural and local experiences of dementia, creativity and dementia, and personhood & citizenship in dementia.
This workshop will not focus solely on academic outputs but will have a strong basis in practice as well. We have engaged personally with partners in Denver who have committed to act as sponsors for this workshop, having traveled to Denver in September 2016 in order to engage these groups more directly. As a result, these groups will be attending the workshop to share their experiences, concerns and help us to shape our research agenda.
For more information, please see our full workshop proposal.
More information on submissions can be found on the call for participation page.
Organizers
Kellie Morrissey completed her PhD in University College Cork’s School of Applied Psychology in 2016. She now works at Open Lab, Newcastle University, where she is primarily involved in exploring the role of technology and service design for dementia-friendly community initiatives.
Amanda Lazar is a postdoctoral scholar at Northwestern University. She completed her PhD at the University of Washington in 2015. Her research has focused on the ways that technologies designed for health and wellbeing position and support individuals as they age.
Jen Boger is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Canada and the Schlegel Research Chair in Technology for Independent Living. Her research investigates the development of intelligent technologies that support aging and wellbeing, with a focus on people with dementia and their circle of care.
Austin Toombs completed his PhD in Indiana University’s School of Informatics and Computing in 2016. His research has focused on maker and hacker communities, and how the development of a maker identity relates to conceptions of care and community relationships. He now works at Open Lab, Newcastle University, exploring the intersections of various kinds of community and social care in the context of digital civics and computing technologies.
Community Partners
The Alzheimer’s Association – Colorado Chapter: the AA is the largest non-profit funder of Alzheimer’s disease research; its local chapters seeks to increase awareness and offer resources for those affected by the disease. http://www.alz.org/co/
Senior’s Resource Center: the SRC is a non-profit provider of information, services and advocacy for seniors in the Metro Denver area and surrounding communities. Their programs and services are designed to help seniors remain independent, living in their own homes. http://srcaging.org
Access Gallery: the Denver Access Gallery is an inclusive nonprofit organization that engages the community by opening doors to creative and educational opportunities for people with disabilities to access and experience the arts. It has recently pioneered a series of community arts projects with people with dementia entitled “Granny Does Graffiti”. http://accessgallery.org
Dementia-Friendly Denver: Dementia-Friendly Denver is a working group across the Denver Metro area, which aims to help make Denver a dementiafriendly community. Attendees from this group will primarily include business people who are interested in ways of ensuring that dementia-friendly businesses can be affordable, profitable, and engaging for communities. http://www.dementiafriendlydenver.org
Participants
This section will include bios for participants and links to their position papers, if they have given permission to include this information.
Although dementia has been a topic of interest for the HCI
community for many years now, HCI work on the topic is typically
scattered and often neglects to consider multiple perspectives,
including the sensitive inclusion of the lived experience of having, or
caring for, dementia. This two-day workshop brings together HCI
researchers with several dementia-focused community groups (Very Special
Arts, Alzheimer’s Association, Senior’s Resource Centre, and
DementiaFriendly Denver) in order to discuss extant research on dementia
under the themes of dementia across cultures and the role of local
knowledge, creative approaches to working with dementia, and citizenship
and personhood in dementia.
Goal
The goal of this workshop is to consolidate existing research within
the area in order to co-create – with community members – a research
agenda for the future which responds to real-life challenges and
opportunities brought about by a diagnosis of dementia.
Submitting
We invite researchers interested in participating to submit 4-6 page
position papers (ACM Extended Abstract format). Papers should critically
reflect on how the researchers’ research/interest addresses challenges
but also opportunities which are faced by people who are affected by
dementia, and should respond to at least one of the themes of the
workshop in some way. Submissions should be sent to
kellie.morrissey@ncl.ac.uk in .pdf format. Position papers will be
reviewed based on relevance to the workshop and the potential for
contributing to discussions on the research agenda to be developed
during the workshop. At least one co-author of each accepted paper
should attend the workshop and one day of the conference.
