Establishment of accommodation for dependent old persons   development project. Reflection on the Visualization tool.

Challenge:  I’m a designer in a public research laboratory in human and social sciences and I work to  improve the living environment of elderly with dementia, those people with orientation  disorders, difficulties in recognizing spaces and also presenting difficulties to be understood  by the spoken word. My mission is part of a partnership with Establishment of accommodation  for dependent old persons, in order to provide solutions to a problem of habitability in these  places, considered impersonal and austere. This can result in the creation of furniture,  architectural restructuring, garden arrangements, etc. It’s then a matter of interacting with  the main users, the residents, to understand their needs and desires in order to provide the  most appropriate response possible.    Selection:  The visualization tool is an extremely effective tool for communicating with this type of user,  the elderly with dementia, as it enables non-verbal communication. The difficulty in  interacting with these people is that, if they understand me, they may not be able to  communicate or not the ability to express themselves verbally. Their only way of expressing  themselves then is through visual interaction, forcing us to use a different kind of language to  allow a visual understanding of their ideas.    Application :  As part of a project carried out within a hospital geriatric department, I was able to implement  the visualization tool, which was offered to targeted elderly users and to hospital unit staff. It  was set up as part of participatory workshops based on volunteerism. Each workshop that I  led brought together caregivers as well as patients (the targeted users). I provided them with  photos, drawing sheets, pencils, paints, cutting and collage materials, as well as story books. I  was asking different questions, which were basically posted on the wall and the goal was for  them to be able to answer that question through the props I made available to them. People  who could no longer express themselves verbally managed to get messages across, for  example by highlighting certain excerpts from story books, or illustrating their thoughts with  drawing accessories.    Insight:  The results I got using the visualization were very qualitative. They brought out solutions that  I hadn’t considered, solutions that the healthcare teams had not suspected. The different  mediums allowed each person to find the means of expression that best suited them to allow  them to answer the questions asked. The various "works" produced by the participants thus  made it possible to identify two elements that they consider essential in the layout of the  place: color and lighting. These are avenues that had not yet been identified and which thus  become major avenues for reflection.    Approach:  The Visualization Tool is a powerful tool in non-verbal communication with elderly with  dementia. It’s a tool that must become a reference in this type of project. However, it has  certain limits with people suffering from severe forms of dementia, these people no longer

knowing how to use the accessories available to them. It’s then a question of finding  accessories that appeal to their memory, requiring a prior assessment with the nursing staff.  However, this tool remains the most effective for entering into communication with people  who no longer have the use of speech or who cannot express themselves in an intelligible way  for the interlocutor. It’s a tool that deserves to be generalized but which must be more  adapted and personalized according to the user interviewed.

