Extended Scaffolding by Remote Collaborative Interaction to Support People with Dementia in Independent Living – A User Study

IT-based assistive services offer the potential to support the independent living of people with dementia provided that they accommodate their specific needs. Due to their declining cognitive functions, these users face among other issues a diminishing capacity for problem solving and attention focus. As a consequence they get easily distracted and finally lost while using assistive services. To counteract such situations it is necessary to implement scaffolding features that will assist users in navigating through all relevant sub-tasks. In our user study it was evaluated whether remote collaborative interaction —obtained by offering family carers remote access to assistive services running in the homes of the relatives they care for— could serve as an extended scaffolding feature. The user study has shown promising results because the vast majority of users even in later stages of dementia understood this concept and could achieve a task in collaborative interaction with their relatives.