The Challenges of Creating Design Requirements for Products for People with Dementia

With an ever-growing number of people with dementia, no cure, treatment or effective prevention effort is available to bring medical relief to deal with this condition. Therefore, efforts should be made to support people to live well with dementia and design can contribute to this by the creation of better care services, products and environments. A European research and implementation project was set up to tackle this, with the aim to promote and support the development and quality of products designed to enhance the daily lives and care of people with dementia, including the creation of a certification quality mark. In order to set up that certification quality mark, a series of requirements for ‘good’ design for people with dementia need to be developed. This has presented several challenges due to the diversity and complexity inherent to dementia, as well as to the wide range of products on offer. This paper presents the initial phase of this ongoing research project and discusses the uncertainties and critique regarding the creation of design requirements and how the consortium overcame them.