The Purpose of the research and practice
To design for and together with persons with dementia gives rise to quite some challenges (1, 2). There are many researchers and designers who are attempting to find ideal ways to involve persons with dementia in their design setup. Reasons for doing this are both pragmatic and ideological: from a pragmatic perspective the idea exists that designs will be better suited to the needs of the ones you design for; on a ideological level, there is the belief that everyone should be able to take part in a design process, or in fact that all people should benefit from what design can potentially offer.
The traditional methods to involve a person in a design process create issues as they assume that the participants are cognitively able; can make use of visual and hands-on techniques; or require a high level of abstraction ability of the person with dementia. In this event we will talk about the neccessity of designing for and together with persons with dementia and will share good (and bad) practices of integrating this in education or your design practice.