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7.4 Goals of HCI case studies 163

Photographs, home videos, and music were collected that formed the basis for
the multimedia components of the tool. This data provided the basis for several
generations of prototype, culminating in designs including multimedia DVDs
to be controlled by a customized input device and an interactive photo album,
with pages that could be displayed on a TV monitor. These descriptive elements
in the case study give a detailed picture of how the research was conducted and
how it informed the system design.
Elements of explanation and demonstration can be found in the discussion of
how the prototypes were evaluated and refined. As with many HCI projects that
examine new tools, this effort involved having the participant make frequent use
of the tool over an extended period of time—in this case, eight times in 4 weeks.
This led to ideas for refining some designs, including modifying the
design of the one-button remote control, while abandoning others, such as the
interactive photo album, which was perceived to be too cognitively demanding.
Follow-up interviews with family members confirmed initial hypotheses
that the system would have multiple benefits for the participants, including
providing perspective, sharing experiences, and communicating.
This project as a whole is an exploratory case study. As relatively little
work has been done on user interfaces for people with Alzheimer's disease,
the description of a successful process is valuable in and of itself. The design
ideas presented raise interesting possibilities, but in many ways they raise
more questions than they answer. The broad range of cognitive impairments
experienced by people with Alzheimer's disease and the varying impacts that their
condition has on family members makes generalization very hard: what works
well for one individual and their family might not work well for others. Extending
the applicability of this work—particularly by scaling the design process—was
clearly a goal of the research team, as they describe further efforts involving
additional participants and improving the process of designing life histories.
The intensive nature of the research—requiring substantial time
commitments both from the individual with Alzheimer's disease and from
family members who are dealing with the emotional strain of the decline of a
family member—made the work extremely resource intensive. The elaboration
of the design process and the completion of one specific design are important
contributions, even if the resulting design does not generalize to other users.
The most broadly applicable results from this story lie in the lessons learned.
The authors concluded that new design methods and principles were needed for
working with individuals affected with Alzheimer's disease that active participation
was more stimulating than passive, and that working with both the patients and
their family members throughout the entire design process was necessary. Practical
concerns included the resource-intensive nature of the research, the emotional
commitment required of the family members, the need to make the approach
practical for larger numbers of families, and the need for standards for evaluation
(Cohene et al., 2007). Although drawn from this particular project, these insights
might be extremely valuable to others interested in conducting related research.