MI-Tale / Project completed

A personalized psychobiographic game to access and preserve memories of people with dementia

The fact that dementia is one of the greatest challenges of the future is evident in the face of the World Alzheimer's Report. The personal history of the patients plays an important role in the care of people with dementia, since it is a valuable source of information for the application of a personalized care approach. The values that were lived and formed in the early adult age are central. They are regarded as guiding values and are reflected in the cur-rent behaviour. The understanding of these values forms the basis of the recognize psychobiographical care model according to Erwin Böhm. This is based on experiences from the early adult life and above all the memories of it.

Project brochure for download

Aims

MI-Tale develops an interactive web-based 2D game that will trigger the memories of the personal story of people with dementia. It runs on browser-enabled devices such as note-books or tablets. The memories are triggered by presenting important personal, local and national events from the formative years of people with dementia. The memories of the as-sociated personal experiences and behavioural values are recorded. The collected memories are enriched with historical photographs from digitized online archives and with per-sonal stories and photos, which are scanned and uploaded to a database. 

The resulting assignment of memories in the form of an interactive game has several advantages. First, it is a great way to train the brain of people with dementia to access memories. Secondly, it can be played remotely or during a visit when (grandchild) children and (grand) parents come to visit. Thirdly, it is a fun way to spend time with each other to playfully reminisce about life. If you play the game frequently, content can be added and ex-panded. If the users are satisfied with the result, they can also export the content as a video or photo book, and later on view the personal life story and exchange with other family mem-bers. 

In order to provide a solid foundation regarding user's perspective and requirements user-centric methods are used for research and development. This means that people with dementia, and their professional and informal care environment are involved at any time of the development. This ensures that the results meet the specific needs of the target groups.

Results

An interactive, web-based 2D game where all the crucial stages of the personal history of people with dementia can be played through. It runs on browser-enabled devices such as notebooks or tablets. The memories of the associated personal experiences and behavioural values are recorded in order to be able to access them in later stages of the disease.