Caregiversâ Voices in Designing Assistive Technologies for Preventing Malnutrition in Older People with Dementia

Many older people express a desire to live in their own homes for longer. Consequently, difficulty in maintaining nutritional health is becoming a common problem faced by some older people. In particular, ensuring good nutrition among older people diagnosed with cognitive impairments living in their own homes can be problematic; thus demanding increased care and support services. Therefore, designing and developing malnutrition preventive assistive technologies is paramount. In this context, we argue that design requirements for technological solutions geared towards preventing malnutrition among older people with dementia should be rooted on user studies rather than only basing them on technology designer’s assumptions and perceptions on how such technologies should be developed. Our focus is to derive design requirements for malnutrition preventive technologies by understanding experiences, issues and expectations of caregivers who provide care support to older people with dementia living in their homes. In this short communication paper, we provide a brief description about the how the study evolved, theoretical framework that underpins the research study and the research methods selected. Furthermore, significant learning out comes related to the research methods are described.