Study through designing reminiscing activities for the elderly

Abstract

This study employed a qualitative approach to obtaining an in-depth and holistic understanding of reminiscing in the elderly. Inviting elders as participants, this investigation aimed for full descriptions of individual cases, while also attempting to identify general trends and significant patterns among them. This empirical study comprises a two-year research project. The first year involves an exploratory study, including surveying the related literature and identifying key concepts. During the second year, this study designed a ‘Story Frame’, and conducted case studies and qualitative interviews.

Story Frame is an artefact to record the vocalised responses of elderly subjects when viewing photos of the past. To better understand digital material regarding reminiscing in simple form, this study establishes conditions to identify families to participate in three studies using Story Frame. The results indicate that sharing the recorded audio-photos can trigger further conversations. By successfully catalysing embodied and social interaction, reminiscence can establish self-identity, improve social connectedness and create feelings of well-being.

Keywords:

• elders
• interaction design
• reminiscence
• photo-elicitation
• social connectedness

Acknowledgements

The authors extend their thanks to every participant in this study, and also to the Suan-Lien Elderly Centre. This research was supported by the Centre of Innovation and Synergy for Intelligent Home and Living Technology. Ted Knoy is appreciated for his editorial assistance.

Additional information

Hsing-Chi Chen currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Industrial and Commercial Design at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, graduated from the Graduate Institute of Visual Communication Design at National Kaohsiung Normal University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Her dissertation explores performative interaction. Her research interest includes complicated pleasures, locative media, social network, tangible user interfaces, slow technology, calm technology, design method, experimental electronic noise, and mainly explores interaction design with performance attributes concerning how to bring life more pleasurable experience. She also regards the interactive process as an interesting interplay with users' surprise, imagination and serendipity.

Yi-Chu Lin received her bachelor degree in information technology and management at Shih-Chien University, Taiwan, and her masters degree in design at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. Her research interest includes aesthetic interaction, poetic images, embodied interaction, gestalt psychology, Bachelard's phenomenological approach and expression-making. In her masters thesis she proposes poetic interaction design as a promising design genre, addressing the issue by validating findings via design works and qualitative experiments. She finally demonstrates a systematic process of developing this theory in a pragmatic manner, focusing on the description of the foundation of poetic interaction design. Parts of these results are published in the 14th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction and the 4th World Conference on Design Research.

Rung-Huei Liang received a PhD from the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C. in 1997. He is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial and Commercial Design, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. His research interest includes interaction design, computer graphics and multimedia. He holds the Spatial Media Research Group, which focuses on interaction design, virtual reality, aesthetic computing, and tangible interfaces. He devotes himself to leading students to create new form by taking technology as material. Regarding interaction design as a process of multi-disciplinary creation, he emphasises beauty and skills of craft as well as the experience of technology.