User research Scottie for elderly

The idea behind Scottie is that with affective communication, the social connectedness between elderly in the early stages of dementia and their next of kin could be enhanced. Scottie was tested in an earlier phase with children that were hospitalized for a longer period in a small scale research. Accidentally was discovered that elderly could also be a target group for this application. The similarity between these two groups is that both have to comply with a longer period of absence and a lack of social contact. 

Waag in co-operation with Windesheim therefore initiated an extended user research among elderly (70+) in 2011-2012. The results of this research can be found in a report that can be downloaded here as pdf. This report is in Dutch, but contains an English summary as addendum (an article published in CoDesign, June 2011).

The first prototype of Scottie was made in 2007 and was further developed within the Healthcare pilot of GATE (2008-2010).