Know-Me: A Toolkit for Designing Personalised Dementia Care

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 May 25;18(11):5662. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18115662.

Abstract

Personalisation is a crucial element in providing person-centred care for people with dementia. This paper presents the development and evaluation of a design toolkit to facilitate the work of designers and healthcare professionals in personalising dementia care. This toolkit, named "Know-me", was grounded in the findings of Ergonomics in Aging, Co-design, and Data-enabled Design, derived from literature review and from the field during a four-year doctorate project. "Know-me" was designed to be easily accessible, flexible, and engaging, providing concrete and hands-on guidance for designers and healthcare professionals to use in designing for personalised dementia care. A proof-of-concept evaluation of the "Know-me" toolkit was conducted via student projects on design for dementia care. During this process, we found that "Know-me" could be adapted flexibly so that the care team could use some of the tools by themselves. A feature-by-feature comparison of the "Know-me" toolkit with similar state-of-the-art toolkits was conducted, and based upon this, the strengths and weaknesses of the "Know-me" toolkit are discussed. This preliminary study indicates that the "Know-me" toolkit is a helpful addition to the current pool of toolkits on designing for dementia care.

Keywords: co-design; data-enabled design; dementia; design education; design tool; ergonomics; human-centred design; nursing homes; personalised dementia care.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Dementia* / therapy
  • Health Personnel
  • Humans
  • Patient-Centered Care