Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Assist Technol. 2013 Summer;25(2):72-9. doi: 10.1080/10400435.2012.715113.
Engagement in creative occupations has been shown to promote well-being for older adults with dementia. Providing access to such occupations is often difficult, as successful participation requires face-time with a person who is knowledgeable in facilitating engagement as well as access to any required resources, such as an arts studio. In response, a computer-based device, the Engaging Platform for Art Development (ePAD), was created to with the aim of enabling more independent access to art creation, ePAD is a an artificially intelligent touch-screen device that estimates a client's level of engagement and provides prompts to encourage engagement if the client becomes disengaged. ePAD is customizable such that an art therapist can choose themes and tools that they feel reflect their client's needs and preferences. This article presents a mixed-methods study that evaluated ePAD's usability by six older adult (with mild-to-moderate dementia) and art therapist dyads. Usability measures suggest that all participants found ePAD engaging but did not find prompts effective. Future development of ePAD includes improving the prompts, implementing the recommendations made by participants in this research, and long-term testing in more naturalistic art therapy contexts.
参与创造性职业已被证明可以促进老年痴呆症患者的幸福感。然而，让他们接触这些职业往往很困难，因为成功参与需要与熟悉促进参与的人面对面交流，并且需要获得任何必要的资源，例如艺术工作室。为了应对这一挑战，开发了一种基于计算机的设备，即艺术发展参与平台（ePAD），旨在实现更独立地进行艺术创作。ePAD 是一种人工智能触摸屏设备，如果客户失去参与度，它可以估计客户的参与度并提供提示以鼓励参与。ePAD 是可定制的，艺术治疗师可以选择他们认为反映客户需求和偏好的主题和工具。本文介绍了一项混合方法研究，该研究评估了 ePAD 的可用性，参与者为 6 名老年患者（轻度至中度痴呆）和艺术治疗师。可用性测量表明，所有参与者都认为 ePAD 很吸引人，但他们认为提示效果不佳。ePAD 的未来发展包括改进提示，实施本研究参与者提出的建议，并在更自然的艺术治疗环境中进行长期测试。
