Feasibility

4.3.1 Feasibility testing by revisiting the State of the Art

After having created a wide range of options that could be implemented in the

‘life-storybook-app’, now it has to be considered which of these are necessary and suitable and which ones can be dropped. To make this decision, chapter 2.2.7 will be revisited, that

describes the benefits of a digital life storybook. By checking whether the collected options are part of these benefits, it can be decided, if they will be included into the

life-storybook-application or not.

The range of ideas that are considered, consists of the ones obtained through the brainstorm as presented in section 4.1.3 in figure X and the ones collected from already existing work, which are visualized as mindmap at the end of chapter 2.3 in figure X. For a better

overview, all these ideas are summarized in the following table: INTERACTIVITY

- Feedback on well-being - Personalised messages - Tabbable photos

- Sound buttons

- Keywords attached to memories

- Categorisation of memories: moodboards, search function, subcollections

- Combination with a tangible book ACTIVITIES

- Phantasy travel

- Suggested activities according to state of user - Sports, games, cooking, meditation, etc. EXTRAS

- Reminders/ schedule

Recalling section 2.2.7, the main benefits that come with a digital life storybook compared to a conventional one, are the multimedia aspect and multisensory stimulation and that it is

interactive, flexible and adaptable. The list of ideas above can now be shortened according to which ideas contribute to the desired benefits the most. Since multimedia and multisensory stimulation are one of the main advantages of the digital version of a life storybook, sound should definitely be included, which is why the idea of sound buttons will be kept. Furthermore, the app should be made as interactive as possible. Several ideas have been collected regarding interactivity, but some of them were decided to be dropped: to make the photos tabbable and to attach keywords to the entries. Making additional information pop up after tabbing on a photo can be interesting but it could be challenging to implement without creating confusion. Also the keywords, at this stage of the app development, would be too complicated to implement and therefore, for simplicity reasons, these ideas will be left out. Same goes for the idea of combining the application with a tangible book, since it would require too much time to

implement it. However, what will be kept is the idea of creating moodboards. That is because it can be nicely linked to giving feedback on the user’s wellbeing, which contributes a lot to the app’s interactivity. Another easy and effective way of making the application more interactive is by letting it ‘talk’. Therefore, the idea of including personalized messages will also be taken on. Subsequently, the list of ideas can be reduced as follows:

INTERACTIVITY - Feedback on well-being - Personalised messages - Sound buttons - Categorization of memories: moodboards ACTIVITIES - Phantasy travel

- Suggested activities according to state of user

- Sports, games, cooking, meditation etc. EXTRAS

The next step is to transfer these ideas to the prototype of the life-storybook-application, which requires a decision on which ideas to include and how. The prototype is approached by first creating its homescreen since this is the first one to appear and can give an overview over all functionalities that are included in the application. By determining what is shown on the homescreen, it is determined which ideas are included and which ones are not.

Three different versions of homescreens have been created as can be seen in the sketches in figure 18. The purpose of the colors in the homescreens is to show which ideas from the previous list they include. Accordingly, the fields on the homescreen have the same color as the idea they refer to. This means that the homescreen in the middle incorporates all three categories of the list, interactivity, activities and extras. More specifically, there is a personalized message, visualized as the speech bubble (blue), which is supposed to grab the user’s attention and connect them to the app. The questions below refer to activities (red), feedback on well-being (blue), and a reminder and schedule (yellow). The reason why these functionalities are formulated as questions is to make the user curious and pick them up from whatever kind of situation they are in when starting the app. The first two questions are ‘What do you feel like doing?’, referring to the activities, what the life storybook is part of, and ‘How are you feeling?’ that leads to a screen enabling the user to give feedback on their well-being and thereafter to the created moodboard. Furthermore there are the functionalities from the ‘extras’ category, which are described by the questions ‘What is going to happen today?’ and ‘What happened yesterday?’. These last two questions are what differentiates the middle version from the right version, since they are not included there. However, everything else in the right

homescreen is the same as the middle one.

A completely different approach has been taken with the left homescreen: it shows a simple rather impersonal login screen. The idea behind this is to make the further development of the app dependent on who logged in, the caregiver or the person with dementia. Accordingly, the app would take on different kinds of styles and display different content and options.

4.3.2 Feasibility testing through feedback by the supervisors

Similarly to when the list of ideas had to be reduced, now it has to be decided which version of the homescreen should be kept. Again, in order to do so, the three versions will be checked on their feasibility. This time, this will be done through feedback by the supervisors.

The first homescreen, the login screen, was discarded because in a discussion with the

supervisors it was recalled that the person with dementia is not meant to use the application on their own. The function of having different versions of the application depending on who logged in is therefore not necessary. That leaves the choice between the second and third launch screen. Since at this point, the project is still an early stage and it is easier to drop features than to reintegrate them, it has been decided to choose the second homescreen that includes more options. Recalling these options, they are expressed by the questions ‘What do you feel like doing?’, ‘How are you feeling?’, ‘What is going to happen today?’ and ‘What happened

yesterday?’. The first one leads to activities that the user could do. At this point, the only activity, that is specified and certainly included is using the life storybook. All the other possible activities are still kept open since they are not that essential for the application. The second question takes the user to the feedback functionality which, as a result, shows a moodboard. For the other two questions no details are specified yet only that they will incorporate a reminder and a schedule in some way.