Artifacts encode memories and shape how one is remembered after death. Older adults, given their life stage, are often engaged in intentional end-of-life planning, making their perspectives on curation for remembrance post-mortem valuable. While HCI has examined older adults’ curation of memory artifacts (e.g., to support well-being), little is known about their curation preferences with the intent of shaping how one is remembered after death. Drawing on interviews with older adults, our work provides insights into how individuals think about remembrance after death, including who is remembered (subject) and who remembers (audience), and how physical, temporal, or relational traces captured in artifacts mediate remembrance. These findings offer design implications for legacy crafting systems to support remembrance that transcends the self, account for the intentional legacy crafting work for distinct audiences, and support hybrid artifacts that allow memories to move across physical and digital spaces.

Research to date in AI and dementia has primarily focused on medical and care-giver applications. This study complements prior work by collecting qualitative data from individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), and mild-to-moderate dementia, uncovering their perspectives, envisioned use cases, and anticipated challenges with generative AI applications. Findings uncover ways people with MCI and dementia want to use AI to engage in resilience building activities related to fostering wellness, building social connections, and finding purpose. However, each of these use cases came with tradeoffs in embracing healthy thinking. Based on these findings, we discuss directions for future work in AI for resilience building in dementia. We intend for this work to lay the groundwork for future research in AI design and development to empower people living with dementia to engage in resilience building activities, which may have lasting positive impacts on their mental health and well-being.

People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (I/DD) often face challenges in communication and learning. Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices can help people with I/DD express their needs and participate more actively in daily life. However, the use of these tools in real-world settings is poorly understood. This study used a qualitative content analysis of 40 publicly available YouTube videos showing individuals with I/DD using ACC. Several barriers were observed, including screen glare, eye-tracking fatigue, long training periods, as well as cost and maintenance issues. AAC supported greater independence, improved learning, and better participation when the technologies worked well. Based on our findings, we advocate for future work to use participatory design methods when developing new AAC devices, use existing technologies to reduce initial and maintenance costs, and follow a competency-based approach to designing future AAC devices to lower steep learning curves with the adoption of AAC devices.

With the integration of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in our society, and past research demonstrating ageism embedded in existing AI tools, there is a pressing need to understand the perceptions and adoption factors of older adults towards generative AI tools to inform future research and development of age inclusive AI tools. Through 20 contextual interviews with older adults, we investigated participants’ perceptions towards OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a Large Language Model (LLM)-based chatbot. Findings from this study uncover participants’ folk theories, their comparison of LLM-based chatbots to search engines, their perspectives on common applications of chatbots for older adults, and the factors that influence their adoption of LLM-based chatbots. Taken together, this work lays the groundwork for future research and development of LLM-based chatbots that consider age inclusivity, taking a step towards addressing AI ageism.

Numerous digital reminder solutions have been created on smartphones, tablets, and smart home devices, to support people with dementia. Yet, these digital reminder systems often overlook the importance of non-digital memory aids, such as paper calendars, diaries, and household objects, in the lives of people with dementia. Given recent work suggests that with progression of dementia, users are likely to minimize use of digital devices, accounting for non-digital practices around remembering presents an opportunity that can be leveraged when designing reminder technologies for people with dementia. This poster proposes a voice-based reminder system that connects both physical and digital reminders through embodied home objects and can be customized to the unique routines of the individual with dementia. We present the system architecture and usage scenarios that we implemented for feedback and iteration in future participatory design studies.

With the rising usage of mobile phones by people with mild dementia, and the documented barriers to technology use that exist for people with dementia, there is an open opportunity to study the specifics of mobile phone use by people with dementia. In this work we provide a first step towards filling this gap through an interview study with fourteen people with mild to moderate dementia. Our analysis yields insights into mobile phone use by people with mild to moderate dementia, challenges they experience with mobile phone use, and their ideas to address these challenges. Based on these findings, we discuss design opportunities to help achieve more accessible and supportive technology use for people with dementia. Our work opens up new opportunities for the design of systems focused on augmenting and enhancing the abilities of people with dementia.

There is growing interest in HCI to study ways to support access to accurate, accessible, relevant online health information for different populations. Yet, there remains a need to understand the barriers that are posed by the way our platforms are designed as well as how we might overcome these barriers for people with dementia. To address this, we conducted sixteen interviews and observation sessions with people with mild to moderate dementia. Our analysis uncovered four barriers to online health information and corresponding mitigation strategies that participants employed. We discuss how HCI researchers may apply these findings towards new technical approaches and standards concerning information accessibility and credibility for neurodiverse populations. Finally, we broaden the scope of HCI research to include investigations of the accessibility and credibility of online information for people with age-related cognitive impairment independent of proxies.

Self-management research in HCI has addressed a variety of conditions. Yet, this literature has largely focused on neurotypical populations and chronic conditions that can be managed, leaving open questions of what self-management might look like for populations with progressive cognitive impairment. Grounded in interviews with seventeen technology savvy people with mild to moderate dementia, our analysis reveals their use of technological and social resources as part of the work of self-management. We detail how participants design self-management systems to enable desired futures, function well in their social world, and maintain control. Our discussion broadens the notion of self-management to include future-oriented, sociotechnical, self-determinate design. We advocate for expanding the way technologists, designers, and HCI scholars view people with mild to moderate dementia to recognize them as inventive creators and capable actors in self-management.

Technology design for dementia primarily focuses on cognitive needs. This includes providing task support, accommodating memory changes, and simplifying interfaces by reducing complexity. However, research has demonstrated that dementia affects not only the cognitive abilities of people with dementia, but also their sensory and motor abilities. This work provides a first step towards understanding the interaction between sensory changes and technology use by people with dementia through interviews with people with mild to moderate dementia and practitioners. Our analysis yields an understanding of strategies to use technology to overcome sensory changes associated with dementia as well as barriers to using certain technologies. We present new directions for the design of technologies for people with mild to moderate dementia, including intentional sensory stimulation to facilitate comprehension, as well as opportunities to leverage advances in technology design from other disabilities for dementia.

Technology design for dementia is an active and growing area. Though work to date has largely addressed functional needs, there is a growing recognition of the importance of supporting meaningful activities. However, technology for active, rather than passive, engagement is relatively novel beyond specific applications (e.g., music or reminiscence therapy). To better understand how to support active engagement of people with dementia in activities, we interviewed nineteen practitioners. Our findings reveal differing approaches to making sense of the actions of people with dementia, as well as to engaging them in activities. We discuss the importance of tracing epistemological understandings of dementia to different configurations of technology for people living with dementia and provide a practical guide to support designers to do so. Finally, we discuss considerations for the design of dementia technologies around facilitating self-actualization and managing emotional exposure for care-providers.

CSCW research is increasingly interested in the ways that people use technology to discuss health and disability online. In addition to studying how people share information and seek and provide emotional support, a growing area of interest is health activism. In this paper, we analyze how a project centered around sharing "real and raw" experiences with dementia provides a safe platform for people to share their authentic experiences. These accounts counter predominant depictions of dementia and push back on tokenistic involvement of people with this condition. In a study involving observations and interviews with members of this project, we find that people with dementia must negotiate several goals which at times compete with each other: sharing a "real and raw" look at dementia, changing attitudes, showcasing a polished presentation, and inhabiting a safe space. The paper concludes with a discussion of future directions for CSCW on configuring a space for dialogue on sensitive topics, health activism, and sharing online with dementia.