A tool to promote prolonged engagement in art therapy: design and development from arts therapist requirements

Jesse Hoey, Krists Zutis, Valerie Leuty, Alex Mihailidis

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

    19 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    This paper describes the development of a tool that assists arts therapists working with older adults with dementia. Participation in creative activities is becoming accepted as a method for improving quality of life. This paper presents the design of a novel tool to increase the capacity of creative arts therapists to engage cognitively impaired older adults in creative activities. The tool is a creative arts touch-screen interface that presents a user with activities such as painting, drawing, or collage. It was developed with a user-centered design methodology in collaboration with a group of creative arts therapists. The tool is customizable by therapists, allowing them to design and build personalized therapeutic/goal-oriented creative activities for each client. In this paper, we evaluate the acceptability of the tool by arts therapists (our primary user group). We perform this evaluation qualitatively with a set of one-on-one interviews with arts therapists who work specifically with persons with dementia. We show how their responses during interviews support the idea of a customizable assistance tool. We evaluate the tool in simulation by showing a number of examples, and by demonstrating customizable components.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationASSETS '10
    Subtitle of host publicationProceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility
    Place of PublicationNew York
    PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
    Pages211-218
    Number of pages8
    ISBN (Print)9781605588810
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2010
    Event12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility - Orlando, United States
    Duration: 25 Oct 201027 Oct 2010
    http://www.sigaccess.org/assets10/

    Conference

    Conference12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility
    Abbreviated titleAssets 2010
    Country/TerritoryUnited States
    CityOrlando
    Period25/10/1027/10/10
    Internet address

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