JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Serious games are used as complementary approaches to stimulate dementia patients. However, many of the serious games use “out-of-the-shelf” technology that may not always be suitable for such population as they can lead to negative behaviors such as anxiety, fatigue and even cybersickness.

Objective:

We performed a study with dementia patients to evaluate how they interact and accept five “out-of-the-shelf” technologies while completing ten virtual reality tasks.

Methods:

We invited twelve participants with dementia at a health care center in Portugal. A within-subject experimental design was used so that all participants could interact with all technologies such as HTC-VIVE, Head Mounted Display, Tablet, Mouse, Augmented Reality, Leap Motion and a combination of Head Mounted Display with Leap Motion. We quantified participants' performance through behavioral and verbal responses, which were captured through video recordings and written notes.

Results:

Findings revealed that (1) task performance using technology is dependent of patient profile, (2) patients had better task performance when using technologies with direct interaction configuration as oppose to indirect interaction configuration, (3) participants did not trigger any emotional responses when using any of the technologies, (4) participants performance is task-dependent, (5) the technology that is most cost-effective is the Head Mounted Display, while the least cost-effective is Augmented Reality and (6) all technologies, except for one (Head Mounted Display with Leap Motion), were not exposed to external hazards.

Conclusions:

Most participants were able to perform tasks using “out-of-the-shelf” technologies. However, there is no perfect technology as they are not specifically designed to address the needs and skills of people with dementia. To enhance the user experience, we propose a set of guidelines that aim to help health professionals and engineers maximize task performance when using such technologies for the dementia population.