Marlein Vogels

Week 1
After the introductory lecture, the group forming process started, which went smoothly for me. After the first group session on Tuesday, I still found myself struggling a bit with what the term "meaningful activity" meant. However, after Sofia and I started working on the research on dementia, I found in the literature that it varies between individuals a lot what a meaningful activity is for them. After figuring this out, we started gathering some information about the opportunities and possibilities for music to aid people with dementia and/or caregivers for people with dementia.

Even though my background lies in Biomedical Engineering and not necessarily in Computer Science, I found the first week truly inspiring and I am highly motivated to continue developing our Foundation together.

Week 2
I found the stories about the music therapy in the lecture from Rebecca Schaefer fascinating. Especially the story about the "snoezelkamers" was eye-opening to me, as I was not aware yet of the possibilities of how simple technology applications can facilitate such a "fun and still comfortable" experience for people in care centers. In the group session, after we formulated our use case a bit more extensively, I started working on the Environment of our scenario.

Week 3
Learning how to make a design pattern was very interesting to me. Fortunately, I got the opportunity to work on the design pattern and rationale for our project. Although figuring out what a design pattern entails was interesting to me, as a person without a background in Computer Science, I found understanding ontologies rather challenging still.

Week 4
This week, Sofia and I made a start on the evaluation of our project. Litian and I prepared the first presentation for our project. Sofia, Litian and I tested and filmed the demonstration with Nao. In the second half of the week, Litian and I finished up the presentation.

Week 5
I gave the made a start with the ethical approach for our project. Furthermore, we made a planning for the upcoming weeks for testing the robot.