Arzuaga Ramos, José R.

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    Development and usability evaluation of a cognitive prosthesis prototype for patients with Alzheimer’s disease and their caregivers
    (2013) Arzuaga Ramos, José R.; Borges, José A.; College of Engineering; Rodríguez, Néstor J.; Vega, Jose F.; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Muñiz, Ana E.
    This work presents the development and usability evaluation of the prototype for a software cognitive prosthesis aimed at lessening some of the negative effects that Alzheimer's Disease (AD) has on both patients and their caregivers. The software application was design following the Participatory Design by Proxies approach, where health professionals and caregivers of individuals with AD were used as subject matter experts to inform the design decisions made. Once development was completed, the application was subjected to a heuristic evaluation by usability experts to uncover usability problems. The usability problems uncovered were corrected and the resulting application was evaluated by a group of caregivers of patients with AD. This usability evaluation consisted of an application walkthrough followed by a focus group, where both quantitative and qualitative measures were recorded. The participants of this study found the application useful and appropriate for them, however not for the individual with AD under their care. Findings also suggest that the use of multimedia content such as videos might not benefit individuals with AD if used as a guide while they complete tasks. In addition, caregivers highlighted the need their user group has for assistance while using computer applications like the one developed for this project. Future work will focus on directing the use of multimedia in the implementation of Reminiscence and Music Therapy, on changing the application to a mobile platform, and on doing more experimentation to answer remaining research questions about the application's usability from the perspective of individuals with AD.