A design-led inquiry into personhood in dementia

Writers and practitioners in dementia care have invoked personhood to offer potential for preserving the agency of people living with dementia. In this context we use personhood to explore how relationships bring agentive potential to experience-centered design through a co-creative, design-led inquiry with Gillian, a woman living with dementia, and John her husband. We designed bespoke probes to empathically engage the couple in the design of both jewellery and digital jewellery to support Gillian's personhood. Our design activity addressed the relationships involved in the context of Gillian's family life and the progression of her illness and how they could be mediated technologically. Reminiscence became, through Gillian and John's own hands, acts of sense making and legacy. The process of design became the way of conducting the inquiry and the designed artifacts became ways of posing questions to make sense of our experiences together.