Communication while, through and after interaction. Generally, experts reported
that all people have the need to communicate. However, while people with mild dementia
often start communication with others, this diminishes throughout the disease.
One aspect that should be explicitly considered in the design of such systems is the
goal of the communication. While our initial intention was to design probes that foster
communication during interaction, e.g. while two people look at the content together,
we observed in the field tests that this was mainly true for objects like the book, the
map and the window. In these cases people either explored the content together, orcommented on it. In the field test with the TV we found that people with dementia
were very concentrated on the program and little conversation took place. Although
we had implemented a pause function for the group leader he did not use it, as he did
not want to disturb the people’s viewing experience. He decided to refer back to the
content after it was consumed. We also observed that communication can take part
through the artifact itself, meaning that the shared interaction could be considered
communication or as one expert said “the artifact becomes the communication medium”.
This was the case with the teddy and the Icho-sphere, which are suited for nonverbal
communication of people with extreme dementia.