Choosing the right knob
Wherton J., Monk A.
People with dementia have problems carrying out multi-step tasks such as making a hot drink. Intelligent systems are being built to prompt people through such tasks. However, the prompts used by these systems are likely to be viewed as novel. As people with dementia are known to be sensitive to novelty this could be a problem. An experiment was performed to determine how to prompt people with dementia with which knob controls which burner on a cooking range. A highly novel implicit attentional cue using fluorescent wire was found to provide comparable or better results than more conventional alternatives. It is concluded that design in this area does not need to be constrained by the need to avoid novelty. The experiment is also of interest because of the way that it was embedded in a natural cooking task suitable for people of varied cognitive capacity.