Free of Walls: Participatory Design of an Out-World Experience via Virtual Reality for Dementia In-patients

Many people with dementia residing in long-term care may face barriers in accessing experiences beyond their physical premises; this may be due to location, mobility constraints, legal act and/or mental health restrictions. Previous research has suggested that institutionalization increases the co-existing symptoms of dementia, such as aggression, depression, apathy, lack of motivation and loss of interest in oneself and others. Despite the importance of supporting the mental well-being of people with dementia, in many cases, it remains undertreated. In recent years, there has been growing research interest in designing non-pharmacological interventions aiming to improve the Health-Related Quality of Life for people with dementia within long-term care. With computer technology and especially Virtual Reality offering endless opportunities for mental support, we must consider how Virtual Reality for people with dementia can be sensitively designed to provide comfortable, enriching out-world experiences. Working closely with 24 dementia patients and 51 medical and paramedical personnel, we co-designed an intelligent and personalized Virtual Reality system to enhance symptom management of dementia patients residing in long-term care. Through this paper, we thoroughly explain the screening process and analysis we run to identify which environments patients would like to receive as a Virtual Reality intervention to minimize the aforementioned co-existing symptoms of dementia, and the development of an intelligent system using the selected environments, that adapts the content of the Virtual Reality experience based on physiological and eye-tracking data from the patients and their personal preferences.