Despite indications that recreational virtual reality (VR) experiences could be beneficial for people with dementia, this area remains unexplored in contrast to the body of work on neurological rehabilitation through VR in dementia. With recreational VR applications coming to the market for dementia, we must consider how VR experiences for people with dementia can be sensitively designed to provide comfortable and enriching experiences. Working with seven participants from a local dementia care charity, we outline some of the opportunities and challenges inherent to the design and use of VR experiences with people with dementia and their carers through an inductive thematic analysis. We also provide a series of future directions for work in VR and dementia: 1) careful physical design, 2) making room for sharing, 3) utilizing all senses, 4) personalization, and 5) positioning the person with dementia as an active participant.

Engaging in participatory research in HCI raises numerous ethical complexities such as consent, researcher relationships, and participant compensation. Doing HCI work in the area of dementia amplifies these issues, and researchers in this area are modelling ethical stances to ensure researcher-participant relationships focus on meaningful engagement and care. This paper presents an insight into the kinds of ethical foci required when doing design research with people living with dementia and their carers. We interviewed 22 HCI researchers with experience working in dementia care contexts. Our qualitative analysis outlines subsequent lessons-learned, such as recognition of the participants, self -care, research impact, and subjectivity in ethical review boards. Furthermore, we found the complexity of navigating both "everyday" and more formal, institutional ethics in dementia research has implications beyond the context of working with people with dementia and outline key considerations for ethical practices in socially orientated HCI research.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract