The Struggle for Recognition in Advanced Dementia: Implications for Experience-Centered Design

Focusing on the person with advanced dementia as a social being presents a new opportunity for Experience-Centered Design (ECD), opening design to appreciate the agency and intentional actions of the person with advanced dementia. If Human-Computer Interaction is to shift from the predominantly assistive approach to a focus on experience, a theoretical framing that emphasizes the relational nature of selfhood is needed. In this article, we present Recognition Theory—a social theory based on an inter-subjectivist account of the struggle for recognition—to extend ECD approaches for advanced dementia. Focusing on people with advanced dementia, we examine recognition as a social and ethical perspective for establishing and maintaining self. We present a framework for design based on research with people with advanced dementia, experience-centered engagement and social identity, that will support designers to craft opportunities for mutual recognition in the design process and the practice of making.