1. Situated Activities

Environment(s)

Main subject

• People medically diagnosed with early-stage dementia.

How does the design solution help to solve the problems of a subject with early-stage dementia?

• The robot assistant (NAO) will take the role of an assistant.
• NAO can interact with the patient subject continuously throughout the day.
• NAO can for example remind the patient subject of their schedule, and ensure that the subject stay in touch with their relatives. Furthermore, it will be able to interact with the subject through conversation.

So in what environment can NAO be implemented?

• In the home of people with early-stage dementia. To be more specific, a room where these people spend most of their day. Idea: connected to Sonos speaker system / Google home to be connected anywhere in the house.
• Implement some sort of learning curve of getting used to the robot.
• It could be weird to wake up and have a talking robot in your house, so we need to think about this...

Activities

Considering the previous section, we need to specify on which specific times of the day or during specific events in the patient subject's life the robot can be used. It would help to have the robot "always on", but this can cause a lot of privacy issues (if the robot would have a microphone / camera). We should read literature about the setting on when and where NAO can be used. 

• When NAO detects that the person with early-stage dementia is present in the room, talk to the person.
• When someone with early-stage dementia is used for NAO to be present, interact when specific questions are asked.
• When someone with early-stage dementia is used for NAO to be present, NAO can come up with questions or start a basic conversation which could lead to reduce anxiety and stress.
• When someone with early-stage dementia gets a visited, NAO can interact in the conversation to reduce anxiety and stress.